Lightspeed, Blackholes, and any Other Space Subject

I thought this was pretty amazing. There are materials and structures that can be made to have a negative Young's modulus (stiffness). But as they have a negative modulus they just collapse. Its been known for a while that it is theoretically possible to make an extremely stiff composite material if one of the phases has a negative stiffness and the other material doesn't. I Thought this was a weird idea and just an odd hobby for some bored/eccentric Engineers and Materials Scientists.
Then I randomly came across some papers a few days ago detailing how some of these guys have actually done this and made a material that has useable properties. The composite they made was a metal matrix composite with Barium Titanate Particles as the filler and tin as the matrix. The stuff is 10 times stiffer than diamond!
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I'm amazed that this hasn't been in the press as it basically throws out the window our current assumptions about the maximum possible stiffness of a material being limited by the stiffness of atomic bonds.
Makes you wonder what other stuff can be done....
 
blackholes in general. something that is so fucking dense and so powerful that light cannot escape.
 
Well relative to us the wouldn't the universe still be expanding and aging normally?

Maybe if the universe is expanding at the speed of light, then it has already expanded to an infinite size because there is essentially no time at the point of its expansion.

I think our brains are just incapable of seeing time other than linearly. Some concepts are just incredibly hard if not impossible for us to fully grasp because we have evolved to view time in a linear way.

I talk such bullshit sometimes.
 
the theory right now is that space goes on forever. but before the Big-bang the space just didn't have any matter in it. and even right now, the theory states that if you travel faster than the matter still expanding from the big bang and beyond the dark-matter that surrrounds it you would find space, no planets or objects, just a vacuum.
 
Well according to my understanding, the universe is expanding according to Hubble's constant, which is something like 71km/s per megaparsec... which basically means that the farther away a galaxy is from us, the faster it is moving away. So the universe is not expanding at a uniform rate.

I dont really know what you're trying to say, so i just figured i'd throw that bit of information in there...

 
In order to understand relativistic gravity you need to think about geometry rather than direct forces. Imagine that space-time is a flexible/rubber sheet. Massive objects distort space time and you can visualise this by imagining putting heavy objects on your rubber sheet. The objects will create dimples in the sheet, as objects with mass will create dimples in space-time. The heavier/more massive the object the bigger the dimple in the rubber sheet/space-time. If you then roll a marble along the sheet its path will be deflected by the dimples in the sheet. In a similar manner the path of light is distorted by massive objects.
Regarding the black hole; the light doesn't actually slow down. Here's how I'd think of it. Think of a spiral shaped well (see clip) and what happens when you roll a coin into it.The coin will keep going around and around until it eventually enters the hole in the middle (which is called a singularity in a blackhole). The coin doesn't fall into the hole because it loses its speed, if you look in the video the coins are still going pretty quick and they're been slowed down by friction (which doesn't affect light obviously)The same thing happens with light. if it can't escape it just keeps spinning around and around until it gets in the hole but it doesn't actually slow down.

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If we assume that there is an 'edge of space' it wouldn't be distorted. If the edge of space exists the it is at the distance that light has travelled since the big bang and there'll be nothing there but light. Light has no mass so cannot distort space-time.
From a quantum mechanics point of view there can be no such thing as a vacuum. A weird consequence of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is that matter can spontaneously (and will) spontaneously form in a vacuum. The formation of this matter doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics as for every particle of matter and its momentum the equivalent anti-particle will also appear so the balance of energy is zero. As a result what might be considered a vacuum will actually be a 'foam' of particles that spontaneously come into existence and then annihilate each other almost immediately. Tis can have some weird effects arond black holes. If a particel-antiparticle pair forms on the event horizon of a black hole then one particle will get trapped by the black hole but the other particle can escape. This leads to the spontaneous formation of matter/energy from a vacuum. Stephen Hawking came up with it an this is called Hawking radiaiton
 
On an entirely separate note, this stuff is great to think about when you have a raging boner that needs to go away pronto.
 
I think there's life outside our solar system but I don't think that it tried to interact with us humans yet. I've read things on the Nazca lines but it didnt convinced me:

"Researcher Joe Nickell of the University of Kentucky has reproduced the figures by using tools and technology available to the Nazca people and which National Geographic referred to as 'remarkable in its exactness' when compared to the actual lines. With careful planning and simple technologies, a small team of people could recreate even the largest figures within days, without any aerial assistance"

This convinced me that it was possible for the nazca population to create those things without any aerials assistnace. Plus, they've found some incredibly long layer of matter around corpses they've found near the nazca desert which is an explanation of the lines that are not forming anything.

On the other hand, Stonehenge is quite impressive and I didn't stumbled on any explanation that were convincing. This is something I don't understand and I might think that outsiders have helped build.

And for the physic exlpaination of relativity, it was really good to read. Some of you guys are genius!

If you wanna know more about the big bang and blackholes you should read on the LHC. It's mind blowing how mcuh money is put into this but it's needed IMO because we all want to know where we are from.
 
dudes and dudettes you will be happy to know i just took a 100 level community college class about astronomy.

so thankfully i should be able to answer most, if not all of your questions about space.

my astronomy teacher had the BIGGEST BONER for dark energy or matter. big boner....
 
The first picture just looks like this to me:
1272762777cloud.png


And mankind has drawn up sorts of weird stuff over more recent history. Some of Da Vinci's stuff could be considered to look alien but I'm pretty sure there weren't a bunch of aliens floating about around 1450-1500:
1272762809Leonardo_da_Vinci_helicopter.jpg


Anyway, these guys were probably tripping balls on coca leaf most of the time so I'd be surprised if they didn't come up with some crazy shit.
Believing in Alien Beings as Gods/religous doesn't mean they exist. I can see why you might think that no one could possibly believe that they werer watched over by Aliens unless they'd encountered them, if if the where higher a Jumbo Jet most of the time. So I'll leave you with one name and one picture to think about:
Tom Cruise
1272763965xenu2.jpg

 
Actually when i saw that I thought this
1272767608Skylane.jpg


The angle is a bit off but from the cockpit of another plane the profile look of a Cessna looks just like the one in the hieroglyph.
But that doesn't mean the guy who did the drawing saw a Cessna. Surely you've seen some really weird or cool looking clouds? I've seen ones that I thought looked like dragon, space shuttles, cars and some shapes that were just had interesting geometry. If I'd had a camera I would have taken a picture of them.
The simplest answer to me is that some guy back then saw some cool shapes in the ski (just as I have) and decided to record except they used stone rather than a digital camera. Extrapolating out visitations from Aliens from these pictures is just way to many inductive steps for my liking. To paraphrase Occam's razor: "don't add any more complexity to an observation than is necessary because you'll likely be wrong".
I saw you posted a few questions earlier so here's a crack at an answer:
Do Aliens exist?
Almost certainly. In Classical and Relativistic physics its reasonable to think the edge of space is defined by the distance light has travelled since the big bang. As a result the universe is finite. This isn't compatible with Quantum Mechanics. One of the quirks of quantum mechanics is that there is no such thing as a true vacuum (i.e. totally empty space).
Quantum theory predicts that particles and antiparticles, with equal but opposite properties and speed, can and do spontaneously appear out of nothing. The particles that appear then annihilate each other almost immediately. This process gives rise to what is sometimes called 'Quantum Foam' As they have equal but opposite properties there is no change in Enthalpy or Energy and the Laws of Thermodynamics are conserved. The result of this is that there is no such thing as 'nothing'. Tis means that anything and everything has something in it and that Space is infinite, even beyond where light has got too since the Big Bang.
We know that the probability of a universe forming is greater than zero (if the probability was zero then our universe wouldn't exist and neither would we). No matter how small the probability of an event occurring it will definitely occur in an infinite space. It will also happen an infinite number of times creating an infinite number of Universes.
We also know that the probability of life occurring in a Universe is greater than zero by our very existence ergo if we have a finite probability acting on an infinite space then we have a certainty that life must occur somewhere else.
This argument is based on the assumption that Quantum theory is roughly on the right track and not completely wrong. However, by its very definition science can never provide a 100% proof (anyone who says otherwise doesn't know what they are talking about). But we can be pretty damn confident that we're reasonably close. If we weren't then these computers wouldn't work as anything with a chip in it works on the basis of Quantum Mechanics. In particular, experiments were done to see if quantum foam or something like it exists and it does. Quantum theory predicts that there is an attraction that will occur between two uncharged metallic plates in a vacuum (this would not happen in classical physics) so this was tested and the force that was predicted does occur by Quantum Mechanics does occur. This phenomenon is called the Casimir effect. On this and other evidence it seems highly likely that quantum foam exists. In order to really be certain we need to wait for the LHC at CERN to get going. If they find something called the Higg;s boson then quantum foam and therefore aliens, are pretty much a certainty to exist.
NB Although I have a high degree of confidence in the existence of alines life I'm not expecting a visit, nor can i think of any good reason why they'd look like the things seen in Sci-FI movies.
 
I think that this is most likely true. I know this is said quite a bit, but its pretty much statistically impossible for there not to be any other form of life out there. There could even be life in our solar system, its said that Saturns moon Encaladus has the basic ingredients for life, now i dont think intelligent life in our solar system, but life. It can form pretty much anywhere if it has the basic ingredients. Even on our own planet life is so biologically diverse. It can start pretty much anywhere.

and here is an excerpt from another article on the topic from daily galaxy. Great stuff to think about.

In fact, Davies writes in his new book, Eeire Silence, that

advanced technology might not even be made of matter. That it might

have no fixed size or shape; have no well-defined boundaries. Is

dynamical on all scales of space and time. Or, conversely, does not

appear to do anything at all that we can discern. Does not consist of

discrete, separate things; but rather it is a system,or a subtle

higher-level correlation of things.

and here is the link to the article.
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/04/the-billionyearold-technology-alien-magic.html
 
Whilst i dont doubt there is intelligent life somewhere in the universe, the evidence supporting the claims that aliens have visited earth is questionable at the very best.

People who really believe that aliens have visited us need to lrn2 Occam's razor. Some lines in a field or some random picture on a wall somewhere doesn't prove anything.
 
[img[http://thesamerowdycrowd.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/black-hole.jpg[/img]

Bump for a show about black holes being on discovery right now.
 
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