http://www.topnewsblog.info/tblog_11304.htm I put the Img right here for your viewing pleasure, but if you don't want to have to keep moving the sliders, just click the link. I can't believe how freaking small we are. All the petty things we have in the world, the wars, myspace, celebrities, our history, all of that... it is absolutely nothing compared to what is out there in space. After looking at this, how can thee NOT be any other races out there? Seriously...
My god... it's full of stars!
Um, two questions.
One, why is the Solar System smaller than the sun itself?
(Pane # 5)
Question two.
How do they know how big the stars are?
Just looking at them only works if you know how far away they are.
How do we know how far away they are?
I only know of Two ways of finding distence.
1. Use a ruller
This doesn't work, becouse I don't know of a ruler that big
2. Bounce something off of it (usually a laser)
This doesn't work, becouse they are too far away for any object to return in any timly fashion.
Pretty damn massive. Wonder if it'll ever be possible to visit places that far..
I would be very surprised if no other inteligent life exists.
Tesla, we can actually send lasers out REALLY REALLY REALLY far in space but thats not how we measure stars. We can measure the distance of a star but comparing it's light to that of a supernova, and by knowing its distance we can figure out it's size.
There are some other ways too
Tesla: Look up "parallax," and when you've absorbed that look up "standard candles" and you'll have your answers.
I'M IMPORTANT
Screamed the speck of dust
I'm gonna need more Terror Stars.
The way I see it. The chance of an Earth like planet being created is pretty small. The chance of life forming on Earth was even smaller. The chance of us evolving into the humans we are now is even smaller than that.
But here we are, using our telescopes to explore the universe.
The universe is JUST SO DAMN BIG. We already know life happened once, there is no way it couldn't happen again.
The chances of something happening within a near-infinite universe are nearly 100%. Something like %99.99999999999999999---
Saying there's no other life with the facts of the thing staring straight the hell at us is like standing in a hurricane screaming "BOY BAD WEATHER NEVER HAPPENS HERE WHAT WOULD I POSSIBLY NEED INSURANCE FOR!!??!!?1?12)
It's not. It's not showing the solar system to scale. It's a comparative size of all the planets against the sun.
The real terrifying part of VY Canis Majoris is that when hypergiant stars die, they send out a intense Gamma ray stream that boils everything in its path. Since its 5000 light yeara away, the stream will still be strong enough to kill everything on this planet.
They measure the radiation using a interfernometer and occultation.
There are multiple ways of measuring size and distance. I think three are commonly used. In order of increasing distance:
1. 2 points far away (on opposite sides of earth) measure the angle
2. Can't quite remember this one unfortunately...
3. Redshift from the universe's expansion
My Ego is bigger.
The ods of there being intelligent life in the universe other than our own are indeed close to 100%. The only question that truly remains is one of communication and discovery. FTL communication will be required to reduce the time between exchanged conversation below a generation or two (or much more for our further neighbours).
I say hi, my son lives when they hear it and my grandson gets to hear their reply (and try to decipher it). They're out there, but they're not reachable without significant advancement in out technological level.
As to calculating distance of stars, The paralax method is used to calculate the distance out to roughly 1000 LY. beyond that there are several methods.
Stellar motions: All stars are in motion, but only for nearby stars are these motions perceivable. Statistically, therefore, the stars that have larger motions are nearer. By measuring the motions of a large number of stars, we can estimate their average distance from their average motion. Moving clusters: Clusters of stars travel together, such as the Pleiades or Hyades star clusters. Analyzing the apparent motion of the cluster can give us the distance to it. Inverse-square law: The apparent brightness of a star depends both on its intrinsic brightness (its luminosity, or how bright it really is) and its distance from us. If we know the luminosity of a star (for instance, we have a measured parallax for one star of the same type and know that others of the same type will have similar luminosities), we can measure its apparent brightness (also called its apparent magnitude) and work out the distance using the inverse-square law. There are several variations on this, many of which are used to measure distances to stars in other galaxies. Interstellar lines: The space between stars is not empty, but contains a sparse distribution of gas. Some times this leaves absorption lines in the spectrum we observe from stars beyond the interstellar gas. The further a star is, the more absorption will be observed since the light has passed through more of the interstellar medium.
Stellar motions: All stars are in motion, but only for nearby stars are these motions perceivable. Statistically, therefore, the stars that have larger motions are nearer. By measuring the motions of a large number of stars, we can estimate their average distance from their average motion.
Moving clusters: Clusters of stars travel together, such as the Pleiades or Hyades star clusters. Analyzing the apparent motion of the cluster can give us the distance to it.
Inverse-square law: The apparent brightness of a star depends both on its intrinsic brightness (its luminosity, or how bright it really is) and its distance from us. If we know the luminosity of a star (for instance, we have a measured parallax for one star of the same type and know that others of the same type will have similar luminosities), we can measure its apparent brightness (also called its apparent magnitude) and work out the distance using the inverse-square law. There are several variations on this, many of which are used to measure distances to stars in other galaxies.
Interstellar lines: The space between stars is not empty, but contains a sparse distribution of gas. Some times this leaves absorption lines in the spectrum we observe from stars beyond the interstellar gas. The further a star is, the more absorption will be observed since the light has passed through more of the interstellar medium.
Period-luminosity relation: Some stars are regular pulsators. The physics of their pulsations is such that the period of one oscillation is related to the luminosity of the star. If we measure the period of such a star, we calculate its luminosity. From this, and its apparent magnitude, we can calculate the distance.
I pulled that off of http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970415c.html
It isn't about if life exists out there or not. The question is does the possibility of any intelligent life besides us existing that can reach us and the answer is no. You will never travel faster than light, mark my words. So unless your life expactancy is 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 and you don't mind spending it on a space ship (probably all of it) than maybe...still just a maybe. That is alot of shit and food you better pack. If you start bring up stupid folding the universe to get from point A to point B quicker you might as well bring up fluffy ninja turtles in space, its still one of the more far fetched theories around. I follow current laws of physics and no one has arrived here and we haven't gone anywhere. It will stay this way. Maybe one day I will be proven wrong lets hope.
Truly amazing. Vy Canis Majoris is scary in size.. and that's just the biggest star that we know of.
And to answer Teslas question about the Solar system... the diagram is showing how big each of the planets are in relation to the sun, not the actual solar system itself, however, there are stars that are *gasp!* bigger than our entire solar system. Kinda scary.
And to think that each of the stars listed above are only in our galaxy, truly speaks for the size of the universe.
Using simulations, scientists have determined that atleast 10,000 "intelligent" species should be in our universe. And that was using a simulation with a very glum outlook on intelligent life. The question is not... do aliens exist, but rather when we will meet with these aliens?
We have actually recorded something moving 10,000 times greater then the speed of light.
From the May 2009 issue of Discover Magazine:
In 1997 University of Geneva phsicist Nicolas Gisin sent two entangled photons zooming along optical fibers until they were seven miles apart. One photon then hit a two-way mirror where it had a choice: either bounce off or go through. Detectors recorded what it randomly did. But whatever action it took, its entangled twin always performed the complementary [opposite] action. The communication between the two happened at least 10,000 times faster then the speed of light. It seems that quantam news travels instantaneuosly, limited by no external constraints-not even the speed of light. Since then, other researchers have duplicated and refined Gisin's work. Today, no one can question the immediate nature of this connectdness between bits of light or matter, or even entire clusters of atoms.
Hmm....very interesting. Thanks for answering my questions.
Lol, from the star trek: The next generation - Where No One Has Gone Before, it was said that in 3 centuries of space exploration they only have mapped 11% of the galaxy
and that is just the milky way
This is... amazing...
Think of the possibilities...
If we could reproduce this phenomenon in travel, the galaxy will open to us. Billions upon Trillions of worlds at our fingertips.
The strength of mankind, its ability to last until the last days of the last stars, will be defined by moments such as these.
That's actually be a lot, since there's something like a hundred billion stars in milky way alone iirc
If there are a hundred billion stars in the milky way and it took them 300 years to map 11% of the galaxy then they mapped a bit over 100 000 stars each day
(on average that is)
actually there are methods of traveling faster than light, they are just outside of our current capabilities. 1st, there is "warp drive" basically its warping space around a veicle to create forward motion. the greater the degree of fold, the more energy you will need but the farther you will go. Ths will most likley be the ultimate form of travel in the far future. 2nd there are wormholes, its still a form of warp drive, but the wormhole will be doing the work instead of the ship. wormholes can be setup so that giant gates create and maintain them, or so that shps create them as neccessary. finally there is the warp bubble, ala the Alcubierre drive, this is also a form of warp drive, but involves creating a buuble of warped space around a ship, thus allowing it and whatever else is in the bubble to move faster than light. i dont know which technology will bring us to the stars first, but i cant wait for the day.
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