EvilZone
Encyclopedia Galactica => Science => : Mordred March 07, 2013, 04:57:15 PM
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Taking into the tradition that I had on another forum, I'm gonna try and do this thread here as well.
For the past 4-5 years I have been steadily trying to get everyone I know more interested in science. Ignorance is not bliss when it comes to this.
Unfortunately science has many chapters and topics, and finding out which one you like or are interested in is very difficult usually. In order to help people discover their Scientist-side I offer you daily 10 (more or less) random facts about science. Usually I post about 5-6 facts about astronomy and physics, and the rest are biology, chemistry and other various topics. This is mostly because I feel that human kind's destiny is in the stars (we are children of stars so it makes sense) and everybody should know as much as possible about what's out there.
Enlightenment and the solutions to all of our problems (religion, famine, wars, disease) IS AND WILL ALWAYS BE IN SCIENCE!
Disclaimer:
1. Any and all facts posted here are based on theoretical concepts that at the time of posting were either already proven to be, or were generally considered to be true.
2. Considering the weekend is a time for relaxation, it is possible that on Saturday and Sunday there will be no posts. It will depend on my mood and time for those two days of the week.
Today's theme: Various
1. When you look at the Andromeda galaxy (which is 2.3 million light years away), the light you are seeing took 2.3 million years to reach you. Thus you are seeing the galaxy as it was 2.3 million years ago.
2. Even on the clearest night, the human eye can only see about 3,000 stars. There are an estimated 100,000,000,000 in our galaxy alone.
3. If a piece of the sun the size of a pinhead were to be placed on Earth, you could not safely stand within 150 kilometers of it.
4. The fastest speed a falling raindrop can hit you is approximately 50 km/h.
5. Every hour the Universe expands by a billion kilometers in all directions (ALL directions!).
6. Wounds infested with maggots heal quickly and without spread of gangrene or other infection.
7. Astronomers believe that space is not a complete vacuum - there are three atoms per cubic meter.
8. Giraffes often sleep for only 20 minutes in any 24 hours. They may sleep up to 2 hours (in spurts – not all at once), but this is rare. They never lie down.
9. Half-a-billionth of the energy released by the Sun reaches the Earth.
10. A teaspoon-full of the matter of a Neutron star would weigh about 112 million tonnes.
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Interesting idea, I like it!
Did know most of the things you said this far but still.
Will put this on my notify list ;)
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This is a pretty cool idea though you will have to have a lot of facts in your pocket if you want to post ten facts each day.
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+1 for an interesting post. I always wish that more people around me were into science as well. Your beliefs exactly mirror mine. Thanks for the facts: Small tid bits of info like that are sometimes harder to come across than general knowledge of a topic.
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I like +1 Ill be following this
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+1. Awesome idea, I love little tidbits of information like this. And who knows, that one day where I am sitting next to somebody on a plane, I can start throwing out incredibly useful astronomy facts. Great idea, will be following :)
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Great! ;D +1
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I'm happy you guys like it. I didn't manage to generate a very positive feedback last time I did it to be honest.
This is a pretty cool idea though you will have to have a lot of facts in your pocket if you want to post ten facts each day.
Oh, you have no idea. My pockets are daaaaaaaamn deep.
Today's theme: Stars
1. Stars are born inside clouds of gas and dust known as nebulae which exist throughout the galaxy. Some nebulae form from the gravitational collapse of gas in the interstellar medium while others are the result of the death throws of a massive star.
2. It might look like all the stars are out there, all by themselves, but many come in pairs. These are binary stars, where two stars orbit a common center of gravity. And there are other systems out there with 3, 4 and even more stars. Just think of the beautiful sunrises you’d experience waking up on a world with 4 stars around it.
3. The 11-year sunspot cycle is actually a part of a larger 22-year cycle in which the entire magnetic field of the Sun may reverse itself.
4. A protostar is a portion of a nebula that is about to form into a new star.
5. A nova is a sudden increase in luminosity of a star, usually in the magnitude of thousands of times its original brightness. Stars that nova usually return to their original luminosity.
6. A supernova is a stellar explosion that is more energetic than a nova. Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy (!!!), before fading from view over several weeks or months. During this short interval a supernova can radiate as much energy as the Sun is expected to emit over its entire life span.
7. A supernova is in about 90% of the cases significant of the death of a star. Whilst there are a few situations in which a supernova can occur without the death of a star, it is usually a sign of the last breath taken by a creator of life.
8. In about 6 billion years, the Sun’s core will run out of hydrogen. When this happens, the inert helium ash built up in the core will become unstable and collapse under its own weight. This will cause the core to heat up and get denser. The Sun will grow in size and enter the red giant phase of its evolution. The expanding Sun will consume the orbits of Mercury and Venus, and probably gobble up the Earth as well. Even if the Earth survives, the intense heat from the red sun will scorch our planet and make it completely impossible for life to survive. Finally the Sun will explode in a supernova and most likely wipe-out the whole Solar System in a fiery death.
9. The death of a star can end in one of three possible outcomes. The star becomes either a white dwarf, a neutron star or a black hole. Each of these particular cosmic object is in its own a new type as opposed to a star. Future facts will discuss each of them as they are incredibly, incredibly interesting (especially neutron stars and black holes).
10. Betelgeuse is the eighth-brightest star in the night sky and second-brightest in the constellation of Orion. The star is classified as a red supergiant (i.e. is on it's way to becoming a supernova) and is one of the largest and most luminous observable stars. If Betelgeuse were at the center of the Solar System, its surface would extend past the asteroid belt, possibly to the orbit of Jupiter and beyond, wholly engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Estimates of its mass are poorly constrained, but range from 5 to 30 times that of the Sun. When it finally breathes its last, the explosion will be so bright that even though the star in the Orion constellation is 640 light-years away, it will still turn night into day and appear like there are two suns in the sky for a few weeks.
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How can the explosion of Betelgeuse light up the sky even if it is 640 light - years away?
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The explosion will be extreme since it's about 5-30 times larger than the sun.
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Because the explosion will be so big and massive that we will be able to see it.
Oh right, I messed up with the time there. The explosion has already happened.
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Ever since I came to know about the universe, I have always wondered what's out there.. where's the end.. where does it all belong to.. where's it going.. it just feels weird and awesome and surprizingly fearful that we have little idea of where we stand. And the idea (or rather lack of it) of there's no end (?) gives me goosebumps at times.
Thank you for giving me those feeling back again. In this days of computers and code and other stuffs I almost forgot about these things. +1
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Oh right, I messed up with the time there. The explosion has already happened.
It might have happened, yes. If it happened right now we would see it in 640 years naturally.
On the other side if it hasn't happened yet, it can happen any time between now and 100.000 years from now.
Also the reason why we can see it at 640 light years away (and even more because we've often seen supernovas in OTHER galaxies) is because when it explodes (and you can read it in number 6 on today's list) - "Supernovae are extremely luminous and cause a burst of radiation that often briefly outshines an entire galaxy (!!!)".
If you want to stimulate your imagination, look at my signature. There you can see 3 different supernovas in the moment when they explode ;)
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Any ideas when the Betelgeuse will finally breathe its last?
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Any ideas when the Betelgeuse will finally breathe its last?
It might have happened, yes. If it happened right now we would see it in 640 years naturally.
On the other side if it hasn't happened yet, it can happen any time between now and 100.000 years from now.
<snip>
My previous post ;)
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I really liked number 7, a star surviving a supernova. +1 :D
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Today's theme: When a star dies it can turn into: #1 White Dwarf
1. A white dwarf, also called a degenerate dwarf, is a stellar remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. They are very dense; a white dwarf's mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth.
2. White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of all stars whose mass is not high enough to become a neutron star (neutron stars will be the theme of the next fact list) — over 97% of the stars in our galaxy.
3. The material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions, so the star has no source of energy, nor is it supported by the heat generated by fusion against gravitational collapse. It is supported only by electron degeneracy pressure, causing it to be extremely dense.
4. A white dwarf is very hot when it is formed, but since it has no source of energy, it will gradually radiate away its energy and cool down. This means that its radiation, which initially has a high color temperature, will lessen and redden with time.
5. A teaspoonful of matter from a White Dwarf would weigh as much on Earth as an elephant — 5.5 tons.
6. Not all white dwarfs will spend many millennia cooling their heels. Those in a binary star system may have a strong enough gravitational pull to gather in material from a neighboring star.
7. When a white dwarf takes on enough mass in this manner it reaches a level called the Chandrasekhar limit. At this point the pressure at its center will become so great that runaway fusion occurs and the star will detonate in a thermonuclear supernova.
8. Over a very long time, a white dwarf will cool to temperatures at which it will no longer emit significant heat or light, and it will become a cold black dwarf.
9. However, since no white dwarf can be older than the age of the Universe (approximately 13.7 billion years) even the oldest white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvins, and no black dwarfs are thought to exist yet.
10. There are currently thought to be eight white dwarfs among the hundred star systems nearest the Sun.
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Today's theme: When a star dies it can turn into: #2 Neutron Star
1. A neutron star is composed almost entirely of neutrons, which are subatomic particles without net electrical charge and with slightly larger mass than protons.
2. Neutron stars are some of the most compact objects in the universe and due to compression, their surface gravity is phenomenally high, that is about 10^11 times that of Earth! An object falling towards neutron star surface will be accelerated at about 10^12m/s2 which will shred and rip it out into constituent atoms! To escape from a neutron star's surface gravity, one would have to travel at a velocity of 100,000 km/s, that is about one third of the speed of light.
3. For a massive star to become a neutron star, its mass should be greater than 8 times the solar mass but lesser than 20 to 30 times, the mass of our Sun, when it runs out of fuel. If the star is greater than 30 solar masses, it becomes a black hole (black holes will be the theme of the next fact list).
4. The neutron stars are so dense that a spoonful of neutron star will weigh more than a mountain!
5. Neutron stars have very high magnetic fields. The measured magnetic fields are the order of 10^12 Gauss, which is about 10^13 times our Earth's magnetic field!
6. A pulsar (portmanteau of pulsating star) is a highly magnetized, rotating neutron star that emits a beam of electromagnetic radiation. This radiation can only be observed when the beam of emission is pointing toward the Earth, much the way a lighthouse can only be seen when the light is pointed in the direction of an observer, and is responsible for the pulsed appearance of emission. Neutron stars are very dense, and have short, regular rotational periods. This produces a very precise interval between pulses that range from roughly milliseconds to seconds for an individual pulsar.
7. A magnetar is a type of neutron star with an extremely powerful magnetic field, the decay of which powers the emission of high-energy electromagnetic radiation, particularly X-rays and gamma rays.
8. The fastest-spinning neutron star ever found has been discovered in a crowded star cluster near the center of the Milky Way, a new study reveals. The star rotates 716 times per second - faster than some theories predict is possible - and therefore may force researchers to revise their models.
9. In Norse mythology, certain myths claim that Thor's hammer was forged out of a dying star. If we assume that this dying star was a neutron star, it would mean that Thor's hammer (Mjölnir) weighs around the same as 300 billion elephants.
10. Artist's rendition of a neutron star:
(http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m59nxjvVGl1qmqhlzo1_500.jpg)
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9. In Norse mythology, certain myths claim that Thor's hammer was forget out of a dying
'forget' should be forged. I'm really liking this idea and all the facts :D
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Today's theme: When a star dies it can turn into: #3 Black Hole - Part I/III
1. A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The theory of general relativity predicts that a sufficiently compact mass will deform spacetime to form a black hole. Around a black hole there is a mathematically defined surface called an event horizon that marks the point of no return.
2. Black holes of stellar mass are expected to form when very massive stars collapse at the end of their life cycle. After a black hole has formed it can continue to grow by absorbing mass from its surroundings. By absorbing other stars and merging with other black holes, supermassive black holes of millions of solar masses may form. There is general consensus that supermassive black holes exist in the centers of most galaxies.
3. Despite its invisible interior, the presence of a black hole can be inferred through its interaction with other matter and with electromagnetic radiation such as light. Matter falling onto a black hole can form an accretion disk heated by friction, forming some of the brightest objects in the universe. Astronomers have identified numerous stellar black hole candidates in binary systems, and established that the core of our Milky Way galaxy contains a supermassive black hole of about 4.3 million solar masses.
4. Although once you cross the event horizon you cannot escape the black hole, it is not the main part of the black hole, the destination of the doomed object, or the point at which an object is completely gone. It is only an invisible circle around the black hole that represents the point of no return, where the gravity is too strong to avoid the "hole". The event horizon can be thought of as an exponentially increasing slope of the hole. The real core of the black hole, the main part, is called the Singularity. The event horizon is just the space around it.
5. The no-hair theorem states that, once it achieves a stable condition after formation, a black hole has only three independent physical properties: mass, charge, and angular momentum. Any two black holes that share the same values for these properties, or parameters, are indistinguishable according to classical (i.e. non-quantum) mechanics.
6. At the center of a black hole as described by general relativity lies a gravitational singularity, a region where the spacetime curvature becomes infinite. For a non-rotating black hole, this region takes the shape of a single point and for a rotating black hole, it is smeared out to form a ring singularity lying in the plane of rotation. In both cases, the singular region has zero volume. It can also be shown that the singular region contains all the mass of the black hole solution. The singular region can thus be thought of as having infinite density.
7. In 1974, Hawking showed that black holes are not entirely black but emit small amounts of thermal radiation; an effect that has become known as Hawking radiation. By applying quantum field theory to a static black hole background, he determined that a black hole should emit particles in a perfect black body spectrum. Since Hawking's publication, many others have verified the result through various approaches. If Hawking's theory of black hole radiation is correct, then black holes are expected to shrink and evaporate over time because they lose mass by the emission of photons and other particles.
8. Astronomers use the term "active galaxy" to describe galaxies with unusual characteristics, such as unusual spectral line emission and very strong radio emission. Theoretical and observational studies have shown that the activity in these active galactic nuclei (AGN) may be explained by the presence of supermassive black holes. The models of these AGN consist of a central black hole that may be millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun; a disk of gas and dust called an accretion disk; and two jets that are perpendicular to the accretion disk.
9. The deformation of spacetime around a massive object causes light rays to be deflected much like light passing through an optic lens. Observations have been made of weak gravitational lensing, in which light rays are deflected by only a few arcseconds. However, it has never been directly observed for a black hole. One possibility for observing gravitational lensing by a black hole would be to observe stars in orbit around the black hole. There are several candidates for such an observation in orbit around Sagittarius A*.
10. Simulated gravitational lensing (black hole going past a background galaxy):
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/03/Black_hole_lensing_web.gif)
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Not sure why but I’ve always disliked astronomy and astrology. Too much of it seems far fetch and bs.
But cool idea regardless :]
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This is earth.
Hmm, seems like it loads the picture automatically, here Is the Link, http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6760135001_14c59a1490_o_d.jpg (http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6760135001_14c59a1490_o_d.jpg) 8000x8000!
Click for a MUCH larger picture. I'm fashinated by this, it's awesome.
On topic: I really like the information you are giving us. Please continue!
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Not sure why but I’ve always disliked astronomy and astrology. Too much of it seems far fetch and bs.
But cool idea regardless :]
The cool part about science is that it's true whether or not one petitioner, confessedly unworthy, believes in it.
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Today's theme: When a star dies it can turn into: #3 Black Hole - Part II/III
1. To an outside observer with a telescope, an object passing the event horizon will appear to slow down then freeze without ever seeming to pass through the horizon. This is because the light takes longer to escape its gravitational pull and light signals won't reach the viewer for an infinitely long time.
2. If a person was able to survive long enough to describe falling into a black hole, he would at first experience weightlessness as he goes into free fall, but then feel intense "tidal" gravitational forces as he got closer to the center of the black hole. In other words, if his feet were closer to the center than his head, then they would feel a stronger pull until he eventually is stretched and then ripped apart.
3. A Wormhole, known alternatively as a Lorentzian wormhole, Schwarzschild wormhole or Einstein-Rosen bridge, is a theoretical opening in space-time allowing a "shortcut" through intervening space to another location in the Universe. However, from the outside wormholes may exhibit many of the characteristics usually associated with a black hole and might be virtually impossible to tell apart.
4. Black holes don’t fill up because they are already essentially a geometric point, with effectively infinite density. There is no limit to the mass of a black hole.
5. All the matter in the Universe will not end up in black holes. Most stars in the Universe don’t have enough mass to become black holes at the end of their lives. Neutron stars and white dwarfs are much more numerous; this is what most stars end up as. Black holes are not cosmic vacuum cleaners, they will not suck up everything in the Universe, and they only suck up what crosses their event horizons.
6. The nearest black hole was believed to be not such a nearby object and was observed by observations of strong X-ray emissions from Cygnus X-1, located about 8000 light years away.
7. More recently (1999) we've discovered another black hole that lies just 1,600 light-years from Earth on the way to the center of the Milky Way in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and is associated with a visible star called V 4641. It is being called a micro-quasar because it showed the brilliant behavior associated with quasars (Quasars are a particular model of black hole which will be discussed in tomorrow's list!).
8. When two black holes collide they don't actually impact each other in the physical way. They just merge and form a new black hole (or it might be the case that one of them "eats" the other one) which grows in mass and strength from their original constituents. The merging usually happens after the lighter black hole has orbited the heavier black hole for some time (between 50 and 100.000 years).
9. White Holes have been talked about but are very hypothetical. They are supposed to be what comes out from the other side of a black hole and where all the mass that goes into the black hole goes to. As I have already said a black hole tends to get bigger as more mass goes in, so really mass just gets added to the black hole and there is no real need for a White Hole. If White Holes did exist (and there’s nothing saying they don’t) then they could be a connection to a parallel universe (most likely scenario due to how a black hole interacts with the fabric of space time) or a distant region of space (it might even be possible that they link to a moment in the future, however that is unlikely). Mathematics does say that black holes and white holes could exist but they would only probably exist for a very short period of time. No White Holes have been observed until now in our Universe, however scientists working on this have recently claimed that this is because each Universe (as part of the Multiverse) has only one White Hole - the Big Bang! I.E. If this theory is correct, inside the core of each black hole there is a new Universe.
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Today's theme: When a star dies it can turn into: #3 Black Hole - Part III/III
1. A quasi-stellar radio source ("Quasar") is a very energetic and distant active galactic nucleus. Quasars are extremely luminous and were first identified as being high redshift sources of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves and visible light, that were point-like, similar to stars, rather than extended sources similar to galaxies.
2. While the nature of these objects was controversial until as recently as the early 1980s, there is now a scientific consensus that a quasar is a compact region in the center of a massive galaxy surrounding its central super-massive black hole. Its size is 10–10,000 times the Schwarzschild radius of the black hole. The quasar is powered by an accretion disc around the black hole.
3. Quasars are by far the brightest objects in the Universe. When astronomers first calculated the energy output of quasars, many of them didn't believe anything could emit that much energy, however analysis of the two jets that emanate perpendicularly to the host galaxy (see picture below) confirmed their computations on emitted energy.
4. At the center of a quasar, the black hole is surrounded by a large, rotating cloud of gas. As the gas falls into the black hole, it is heated up to millions of degrees. The gas emits thermal radiation due to its enormous heat. This thermal radiation spans the spectrum, making the quasar bright in the visible spectrum as well as x-rays.
5. The gravitational force from the black hole is so strong, and pulling so much gas, that the gas glows brighter than the surrounding galaxy. Not all the gas is able to find its way into the black hole; much of it escapes and is carried off by strong winds blowing out from the center for the quasar.
6. The most luminous quasars radiate at a rate that can exceed the output of average galaxies, equivalent to 2 trillion (2×1012) suns. This radiation is emitted across the spectrum, almost equally, from X-rays to the far-infrared with a peak in the ultraviolet-optical bands, with some quasars also being strong sources of radio emission and of gamma-rays.
7. More than 200,000 quasars are known, most from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. All observed quasar spectra have redshifts between 0.056 and 7.085. Applying Hubble's law to these redshifts, it can be shown that they are between 600 million and 28.85 billion light-years away (in terms of proper distance). Because of the great distances to the farthest quasars and the finite velocity of light, we see them and their surrounding space as they existed in the very early universe.
8. Because quasars are extremely distant, bright, and small in apparent size, they are useful reference points in establishing a measurement grid on the sky. The International Celestial Reference System (ICRS) is based on hundreds of extra-galactic radio sources, mostly quasars, distributed around the entire sky. Because they are so distant, they are apparently stationary to our current technology, yet their positions can be measured with the utmost accuracy by Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI); positions of most are known to 0.001 arc-seconds or better, orders of magnitude more precise than the best optical measurements.
9. One of the most important facts about quasars is that they are all very distant from us. The closest quasar is about 800 million light years away. Therefore, we can conclude that there are no quasars in the universe today and the last quasar disappeared about 800 million years ago. Where did the quasars go? No one can say for sure. Given their power source, however, it is most likely that they simply ran out of fuel. The black holes eventually consumed all the gas and dust in the disk surrounding them, so the quasars ceased to shine, however that means only the death of the quasar, and not of the black hole. Most likely galaxies that lose their quasar just become a normal galaxy with a super-massive black hole at the center.
10. Artist's rendition of a galaxy with an active quasar - emission jets (north and south pole of the super-massive black hole in the center) are to scale:
(http://www.mrwallpaper.com/wallpapers/cosmic-quasar-1600x1200.jpg)
BONUS
11. The X-ray image of the quasar PKS 1127-145, a highly luminous source of X-rays and visible light about 10 billion light years from Earth, shows an enormous X-ray jet that extends at least a million light years (the Milky Way galaxy is 100.000 light years across) from the quasar (actual picture!):
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/PKS_1127-145_X-rays.jpg)
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Today's theme: Various
1. When glass breaks, the cracks move at speeds of more than 4,500 km/h (3,000 miles/h).
2. The most powerful lasers are made with Neodymium-doped Yttrium crystals. In a fraction of a second, they produce more power than the whole United States.
3. If you yelled for 8 years, 7 months and 6 days, you would have produced just enough sound energy to heat up one cup of coffee.
4. Due to gravitational effects, you weigh slightly less when the moon is directly overhead.
5. The lightning bolt is 3 times hotter than the Sun.
6. If an atom were the size of a stadium, its electrons would be as small as bees.
7. The effect of Special Relativity (discovered by Albert Einstein) made astronaut Sergei Avdeyev a fraction of a second younger upon his return to Earth after 747 days in space.
8. The diameter of a proton (you can find them in the nucleus of atoms) is approximately 0.000000000001 mm (1/25,000,000,000,000 inch).
9. All things around us are made up of atoms. They are so incredibly small that about 100,000 atoms would fit inside a period such as the one at the end of this very sentence.
10. It is estimated by scientists that the oceans on Earth contain about 20 tons of gold. This gold, however, exists in small non-extractable amounts.
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nice :D
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Today's theme: Chemistry
1. Chemistry is the study of matter and energy and the interactions between them. It is a physical science that is closely related to physics, which often shares the same definition.
2. Chemistry traces its roots back to the ancient study of alchemy. Chemistry and alchemy are separate now, though alchemy still is practiced today.
3. All matter is made up of the chemical elements, which are distinguished from each other by the numbers of protons they possess.
4. The chemical elements are organized in order of increasing atomic number into the periodic table. The first element in the periodic table is hydrogen.
5. Each element in the periodic table has a one or two letter symbol. The only letter in the English alphabet not used on the periodic table is "J". The letter "Q" only appears in the symbol for the placeholder name for element 114, ununquadium, which has the symbol "Uuq". When element 114 is officially discovered, it will be given a new name.
6. At room temperature, there are only two liquid elements. These are bromine and mercury.
7. The IUPAC name for water, H2O, is dihydrogen monoxide.
8. The discoverer of an element may give it a name. There are elements named for people (Mendelevium, Einsteinium), places (Californium, Americium) and other things.
9. Most elements are metals and most metals are silver-colored or gray. The only non-silver metals are gold and copper.
10. Although you may consider gold to be rare, there is enough gold in the Earth's crust to cover the land surface of the planet knee-deep.
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Today's theme: Chemistry
1. In the early 1940s a large portion of the world’s plutonium supply was accidentally ingested by a lab technician. The majority of plutonium, like other heavy metals, passes right through your digestive tract. Don’t ask how they recovered all that plutonium…
2. Did your high school tell you there are three states of matter? Solid, liquid, gas. Or Maybe they threw in a fourth state, plasma. In fact, there are many more than just three or four states of matter. Around absolute zero a lot of funny things happen and new states of matter pop up, like Bose-Einstein condensates which defy gravity.
3. Watson and Crick, the co-discoverer’s of the DNA double helix never actually ran any experiments on their own, but rather read deeply into others’ work and deduced the structure.
4. Lithium can alter how you think and has been known to “cure” certain mental illnesses. In fact, lithium is used in a lot of psychoactive drugs.
5. One of the first X-rays, a picture you’ve probably seen of a woman’s hand with a ring on it, was of Bertha Rontgen’s hand. She thought seeing her bones was a death omen.
6. Hot water freezes quicker than cold water.
7. People used to drink radioactive water from a device called the “Revigator.” It was considered to be a healthy drink.
8. Diamonds aren’t the rarest gems on Earth. In fact, they’re relatively common. The rarest gem is jadeite and costs about $3 million per carat.
9. Only 28 grams of the rarest substance on Earth exist. What’s the rarest substance on Earth? Astatine.
10. Gallium, a metal element, will melt in your hand. You can even buy some here: http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=87&products_id=142
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Because sometimes I want to offer you guys something more consistent to digest, I have a category called "SPECIAL" in which I replace the 10 facts with a (in my opinion amazing) picture and a short story about what you can see in there.
I like doing this type of post also because it offers me the possibility to show you, for real, exactly what the world you live in looks like.
Today's theme: SPECIAL - Wonders of the Universe
(http://www.spacetelescope.org/static/archives/images/screen/heic0108a.jpg)
This is the globular cluster NGC 1850; it is located about 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud in the constellation Dorado.
The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a nearby irregular galaxy, and a satellite of the Milky Way. At a distance of slightly less than 50 kiloparsecs (~163,000 light-years), the LMC is the third closest galaxy to the Milky Way, with the Sagittarius Dwarf Spheroidal (~16 kiloparsecs) and Canis Major Dwarf Galaxy (~12.9 kiloparsecs) lying closer to the center of the Milky Way.
It has a mass equivalent to approximately 10 billion times the mass of our Sun (1010 solar masses), making it roughly 1/100 as massive as the Milky Way, and a diameter of about 14,000 light-years (~4.3 kpc). The LMC is the fourth largest galaxy in the Local Group, after the Andromeda Galaxy (M31), our own Milky Way Galaxy, and the Triangulum Galaxy (M33). The object itself is interesting and peculiar in a few different ways...
Firstly, it's surrounded by nebula-like material that kind of resemble Star Trek shields in some images. Many astronomers believe this material was generated during supernova events throughout the cluster’s history.
Secondly, the cluster is actually two clusters. You have the main globular cluster; the large, sprawling structure that probably first grabbed your attention when you first gazed upon the image. Tucked away near the bottom corner is a second, much smaller cluster of stars. The smaller cluster is part of the main cluster (meaning the smaller structure is gravitationally bound with the larger structure instead of being in the fore/background) and is composed of both massive, hot blue stars and smaller, cooler red stars. This kind of diversity gives scientists an opportunity to study the various different aspects of star-formation.
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Today's theme: Various
1. Every year over one million earthquakes shake the Earth.
2. The largest ever hailstone weighed over 1kg and fell in Bangladesh in 1986.
3. In October 1999 an Iceberg the size of London broke free from the Antarctic ice shelf.
4. Human tapeworms can grow up to 22.9m.
5. The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun.
6. The dinosaurs became extinct before the Rockies or the Alps were formed.
7. When a flea jumps, the rate of acceleration is 20 times that of the space shuttle during launch.
8. The Australian billygoat plum contains 100 times more vitamin C than an orange.
9. One million, million, million, million, millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the Universe was the size of a …pea.
10. A pig’s orgasm lasts for up to 30 minutes.
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The Earth is 4.56 billion years old…the same age as the Moon and the Sun. ???
Where's the moon from then?! ??? ??? How did the Earth catch it into orbit?
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The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth–Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact, where a Mars-sized body (named Theia) collided with the newly formed proto-Earth, blasting material into orbit around it, which accreted to form the Moon. Giant impacts are thought to have been common in the early Solar System. Computer simulations modelling a giant impact are consistent with measurements of the angular momentum of the Earth–Moon system and the small size of the lunar core. These simulations also show that most of the Moon came from the impactor, not from the proto-Earth.
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Today's theme: Various
1. Without its lining of mucus, your stomach would digest itself.
2. Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14 and crayfish have 200.
3. There are 100.000 km (60,000 miles) of blood vessels in the human body.
4. An individual blood cell takes about 60 seconds to make a complete circuit of the body.
5. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell was buried, the entire US telephone system was shut down for 1 minute in tribute.
6. The low frequency call of the humpback whale is the loudest noise made by a living creature.
7. The call of the humpback whale is louder than the Concorde and can be heard from 500 miles away.
8. Each person sheds ~18kg (40lbs) of skin in his or her lifetime.
9. More germs are transferred shaking hands than kissing.
10. A healthy person has 6,000 million, million, million hemoglobin molecules.
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Thanks again Mordred, and +1 :)
When you say more germs are spread by shaking hands than kissing, isn't that irrelevant because when you kiss you are actually bringing those germs into more direct contact with your body, bypassing the skin barrier, whereas when you shake hands your skin protects you from infection? Or am I wrong?
I love all these facts, by the way, eventually they build up and become even more useful. Keep it up :D
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Thanks again Mordred, and +1 :)
When you say more germs are spread by shaking hands than kissing, isn't that irrelevant because when you kiss you are actually bringing those germs into more direct contact with your body, bypassing the skin barrier, whereas when you shake hands your skin protects you from infection? Or am I wrong?
I love all these facts, by the way, eventually they build up and become even more useful. Keep it up :D
But you don't come in contact with so much "germs" with your mouth do you?
Since you touch the handle of a door with your palm, it holds more germs. And apparently, the space of a single nail contains more germs then the sitting "lock" of a toilet.
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But you don't come in contact with so much "germs" with your mouth do you?
Since you touch the handle of a door with your palm, it holds more germs. And apparently, the space of a single nail contains more germs then the sitting "lock" of a toilet.
This is the correct answer to your question Uriah. Theoretically you have less bacteria in your mouth than on your hand or phone. Also in a various related fact, the mouth of the average dog contains about 1/3 the amount of bacteria as compared to the human mouth.
(http://24.media.tumblr.com/315bf4506d186e7686c42727a0dd448b/tumblr_mfrmi9ytp61s1fxnmo1_500.jpg)
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This is the correct answer to your question Uriah. Theoretically you have less bacteria in your mouth than on your hand or phone. Also in a various related fact, the mouth of the average dog contains about 1/3 the amount of bacteria as compared to the human mouth.
[picture]
AWW YEAH! I was right! And it was a wild guess!
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Today's theme: Various
1. A salmon-rich, low cholesterol diet means that Inuits rarely suffer from heart disease.
2. The world’s smallest winged insect, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye of a housefly.
3. If the Sun were the size of a beach ball then Jupiter would be the size of a golf ball and the Earth would be as small as a pea.
4. It would take over an hour for a heavy object to sink 6.7 miles down to the deepest part of the ocean.
5. There are more living organisms on the skin of each human than there are humans on the surface of the Earth.
6. The grey whale migrates 12,500 miles from the Arctic to Mexico and back every year.
7. Each rubber molecule is made of 65,000 individual atoms.
8. Around a million, billion neutrinos from the Sun will pass through your body while you read this sentence.
9. …and now they are already past the Moon.
10. The Saturn V rocket, which carried a man to the Moon, develops power equivalent to fifty 747 jumbo jets.
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Today's theme: Various
1. Koalas sleep an average of 22 hours a day, two hours more than the sloth.
2. Light would take .13 seconds to travel around the Earth.
3. Neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoonful would weigh more than all the people on Earth.
4. One in every 2000 babies is born with a tooth.
5. The weird static that you see on your TV set when you're not on a channel is created by the background radiation from the Big Bang.
6. Even traveling at the speed of light it would take 2 million years to reach the nearest large galaxy, Andromeda. This is why most scientists working on actual space travel are currently trying to build a proof-of-concept Alcubierre warp drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive).
7. At over 2000 kilometers long, The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth.
8. The driest inhabited place in the world is Aswan, Egypt where the annual average rainfall is .02 inches.
9. The deepest part of any ocean in the world is the Mariana trench in the Pacific with a depth of ~11 kilometers (35,797 feet).
10. The largest meteorite craters in the world are in Sudbury Ontario, Canada and in Vredefort, South Africa.
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5. The weird static that you see on your TV set when you're not on a channel is created by the background radiation from the Big Bang.
Not all of it. About 25-30%. Isn't it?
+1 for this link Alcubierre warp drive (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive)
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Today's theme: SPECIAL - The Alcubierre Warp Drive
(http://www.patrickshrier.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/alcubierre-warp-drive.jpg)
The mesh you see under the shuttle is the fabric of space-time as described by Albert Einstein. The Alcubierre Warp Drive bends space-time in front of the ship, and expands it behind it. At the end of the post there is a short video that will show you this effect graphically so don't worry if you don't understand it now.
A few months ago, physicist Harold White stunned the aeronautics world when he announced that he and his team at NASA had begun work on the development of a faster-than-light warp drive. His proposed design, an ingenious re-imagining of an Alcubierre Drive, may eventually result in an engine that can transport a spacecraft to the nearest star in a matter of weeks — and all without violating Einstein's law of relativity.
The idea came to White while he was considering a rather remarkable equation formulated by physicist Miguel Alcubierre. In his 1994 paper titled, "The Warp Drive: Hyper-Fast Travel Within General Relativity," Alcubierre suggested a mechanism by which space-time could be "warped" both in front of and behind a spacecraft.
Michio Kaku dubbed Alcubierre's notion a "passport to the universe." It takes advantage of a quirk in the cosmological code that allows for the expansion and contraction of space-time, and could allow for hyper-fast travel between interstellar destinations. Essentially, the empty space behind a starship would be made to expand rapidly, pushing the craft in a forward direction — passengers would perceive it as movement despite the complete lack of acceleration.
White speculates that such a drive could result in "speeds" that could take a spacecraft to Alpha Centauri in a mere two weeks — even though the system is 4.3 light-years away.
In terms of the engine's mechanics, a spheroid object would be placed between two regions of space-time (one expanding and one contracting). A "warp bubble" would then be generated that moves space-time around the object, effectively repositioning it — the end result being faster-than-light travel without the spheroid (or spacecraft) having to move with respect to its local frame of reference.
"Remember, nothing locally exceeds the speed of light, but space can expand and contract at any speed," White told. "However, space-time is really stiff, so to create the expansion and contraction effect in a useful manner in order for us to reach interstellar destinations in reasonable time periods would require a lot of energy."
And indeed, early assessments published in the ensuing scientific literature suggested horrific amounts of energy — basically equal to the mass-energy of the planet Jupiter (what is 1.9 × 1027 kilograms or 317 Earth masses). As a result, the idea was brushed aside as being far too impractical. Even though nature allowed for a warp drive, it looked like we would never be able to build one ourselves.
"However," said White, "based on the analysis I did the last 18 months, there may be hope." The key, says White, may be in altering the geometry of the warp drive itself.
In October of last year, White was preparing for a talk he was to give for the kickoff to the 100 Year Starship project in Orlando, Florida. As he was pulling together his overview on space warp, he performed a sensitivity analysis for the field equations, more out of curiosity than anything else.
"My early results suggested I had discovered something that was in the math all along," he recalled. "I suddenly realized that if you made the thickness of the negative vacuum energy ring larger — like shifting from a belt shape to a donut shape — and oscillate the warp bubble, you can greatly reduce the energy required — perhaps making the idea plausible." White had adjusted the shape of Alcubierre's ring which surrounded the spheroid from something that was a flat halo to something that was thicker and curvier.
He presented the results of his Alcubierre Drive rethink a year later at the 100 Year Starship conference in Atlanta where he highlighted his new optimization approaches — a new design that could significantly reduce the amount of exotic matter required. And in fact, White says that the warp drive could be powered by a mass that's even less than that of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
That's a significant change in calculations to say the least. The reduction in mass from a Jupiter-sized planet to an object that weighs a mere 1,600 pounds has completely reset White's sense of plausibility — and NASA's.
Graphical View of the Alcubierre Warp Drive - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZt1Yh4-1U&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwZt1Yh4-1U&feature=player_embedded)
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+1 and thank you so very much for that. That was an extremely interesting read.
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Sorry about the absence of these things in the past few days. Been quite busy, but to make it up to you guys I will be making another short "series" similar to the one in the beginning called "When a star dies it can turn into: ...".
Today's theme: Quantum Mechanics: #1 Introduction to the quantum world
1. Quantum mechanics (QM – also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics which deals with physical phenomena at microscopic scales, where the action is on the order of the Planck constant and the size of particles is of the order of Planck length.
2. In physics, the Planck length, denoted ℓP, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616199(97)×10−35 metres. It is a base unit in the system of Planck units. The Planck length can be defined from three fundamental physical constants: the speed of light in a vacuum, Planck's constant, and the gravitational constant. It is almost impossible for me to explain to you how small that is, so in order to help you visualize it please check out this link and move the bar to the left slowly (for small, or right for bigger): http://htwins.net/scale2/
3. Quantum mechanics provides a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter.
4. In advanced topics of quantum mechanics, some of these behaviors are macroscopic and emerge at only extreme (i.e., very low or very high) energies or temperatures. The name quantum mechanics derives from the observation that some physical quantities can change only in discrete amounts (Latin: quanta), and not in a continuous (cf. analog) way.
5. In the context of quantum mechanics, the wave–particle duality of energy and matter and the uncertainty principle provide a unified view of the behavior of photons, electrons, and other atomic-scale objects.
6. Wave–particle duality postulates that all particles exhibit both wave and particle properties.
7. In quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities asserting a fundamental limit to the precision with which certain pairs of physical properties of a particle known as complementary variables, such as position x and momentum p, can be known simultaneously. For instance, the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. You can't know where a particle is AND how fast it's going, at the same time.
8. Even with the defining postulates of both Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum theory being indisputably supported by rigorous and repeated empirical evidence and while they do not directly contradict each other theoretically (at least with regard to their primary claims), they have proven extremely difficult to incorporate into one consistent, cohesive model.
9. Predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy. According to the correspondence principle between classical and quantum mechanics, all objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics, and classical mechanics is just an approximation for large systems of objects (or a statistical quantum mechanics of a large collection of particles). The laws of classical mechanics thus follow from the laws of quantum mechanics as a statistical average.
WARNING: Complex terms follow! In order to fully understand today's #10 you will probably have to wait until this particular series is done. I will be explaining M-theory completely after the quantum mechanics series that just started, however today's #10 will offer you a taste of what's to come for this topic, and how it's related to quantum mechanics. Without further ado:
10. The quest to unify the fundamental forces through quantum mechanics is still ongoing. Quantum electrodynamics (or "quantum electromagnetism"), which is currently the most accurately tested physical theory, has been successfully merged with the weak nuclear force into the electroweak force and work is currently being done to merge the electroweak and strong force into the electrostrong force. Current predictions state that at around 1014 GeV the three aforementioned forces are fused into a single unified field. Beyond this "grand unification," it is speculated that it may be possible to merge gravity with the other three gauge symmetries, expected to occur at roughly 1019 GeV. However — and while special relativity is parsimoniously incorporated into quantum electrodynamics — the expanded general relativity, currently the best theory describing the gravitation force, has not been fully incorporated into quantum theory. One of the leading authorities continuing the search for a coherent TOE (Theory of Everything) is Edward Witten, a theoretical physicist who formulated the groundbreaking M-theory, which is an attempt at describing the supersymmetrical based string theory. M-theory posits that our apparent 4-dimensional spacetime (1.up-down +2.forward-back + 3.left-right + 4.time) is, in reality, actually an 11-dimensional spacetime containing 10 spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension, although 7 of the spatial dimensions are - at lower energies - completely "compactified" (or infinitely curved) and not readily amenable to measurement or probing.
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Thanks again Mordred, it's so awesome that there are people as interested in this stuff that I am. I guess my independent studies are holding up, too, because i either already knew or perfectly understood all of that :D
We should discuss this stuff together sometime.
Anyways, would you mind please explaining quantum foam? It's the most interesting thing to me at the moment, and my understanding of it is very limited. Thanks, and plus 1 :)
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Today's theme: Quantum Mechanics: #2 Quantum phenomena
1. Quantum superposition is a fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that holds that a physical system—such as an electron—exists partly in all its particular, theoretically possible states (or, configuration of its properties) simultaneously. However, when measured or observed, the electron gives a result corresponding to only one of the possible configurations
2. The most famous and the first experiment related to quantum superposition is offered to us by Erwin Schrödinger in his "thought" experiment: Schrödinger's Cat. Although the original "experiment" was imaginary, similar principles have been researched and used in practical applications. The thought experiment is also often featured in theoretical discussions of the interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the course of developing this experiment, Schrödinger coined the term verschränkung (entanglement).
3. The experiment, which is also a great example of how superposition works, is described like this: a cat, a flask of poison, and a radioactive source are placed in a sealed box. If an internal monitor detects radioactivity (i.e. a single atom decaying), the flask is shattered, releasing the poison that kills the cat. The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics implies that after a while, the cat is simultaneously alive and dead. Yet, when one looks in the box, one sees the cat either alive or dead, not both alive and dead.
4. The most commonly held interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Copenhagen interpretation. In the Copenhagen interpretation, a system stops being a superposition of states and becomes either one or the other when an observation takes place. This experiment makes apparent the fact that the nature of measurement, or observation, is not well-defined in this interpretation.
5. The Schrödinger experiment can be interpreted to mean that while the box is closed, the system simultaneously exists in a superposition of the states "decayed nucleus/dead cat" and "undecayed nucleus/living cat," and that only when the box is opened and an observation performed does the wave function collapse into one of the two states.
6. Quantum entanglement occurs when particles such as photons, electrons, molecules as large as buckyballs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckyballs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckyballs)), and even small diamonds interact physically and then become separated.
7. The type of interaction is such that each resulting member of a pair is properly described by the same quantum mechanical description (state), which is indefinite in terms of important factors such as position, momentum, spin, polarization, etc.
8. Quantum entanglement is a form of quantum superposition. When a measurement is made and it causes one member of such a pair to take on a definite value (e.g., clockwise spin), the other member of this entangled pair will at any subsequent time be found to have taken the appropriately correlated value (e.g., counterclockwise spin). Thus, there is a correlation between the results of measurements performed on entangled pairs, and this correlation is observed even though the entangled pair may have been separated by arbitrarily large distances.
9. In quantum entanglement, part of the transfer happens instantaneously. Repeated experiments have verified that this works even when the measurements are performed more quickly than light could travel between the sites of measurement: there is no slower-than-light influence that can pass between the entangled particles. Recent experiments have shown that this transfer occurs at least 10,000 times faster than the speed of light, which does not remove the possibility of it being an instantaneous phenomenon, but only sets a lower limit.
10. A quantum computer is a computation device that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from digital computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), quantum computation uses quantum properties to represent data and perform operations on these data. (quantum computers will be the theme of the next fact list)
BONUS
11. How to Build Your Own Quantum Entanglement Experiment: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/02/08/how-to-build-your-own-quantum-entanglement-experiment-part-1-of-2/ (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/critical-opalescence/2013/02/08/how-to-build-your-own-quantum-entanglement-experiment-part-1-of-2/)
DOUBLE-BONUS
12.
Quantum foam (also referred to as space time foam) is a concept in quantum mechanics devised by John Wheeler in 1955. The foam is supposed to be conceptualized as the foundation of the fabric of the universe. The idea comes from the attempts to merge relativistic gravity with quantum mechanics.
Gravity, Einstein proved, was a bending of the fabric of spacetime. It also behaves like a field. Place a point far away from the Earth, and it still will be part of the Earth’s gravitational field, but it will be out where the tug of gravity is weak. Place it close to the Earth, and the tug is stronger, and it will fall. Other planets warp spacetime and create their own gravitational tugs. So space isn't gravity-free, but a vast array of different gravitational tugs through which particles move. Pretty much everywhere that anything is placed, there is a gravitational field that it moves through.
Scientists have observed quantum tunneling. This happens when a particle goes through a barrier that it should not have the energy to penetrate. It would be something like slowly rolling a soccer ball at a thick wall and watching it suddenly pop out the other side. Particles that do it must be getting a vast quantity of energy from nowhere. Physicists believe that, over short period of time, particles can suddenly “borrow” energy and tunnel out. The shorter the period of time, the more energy they can borrow.
On a quantum scale, this isn’t so weird. Due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, the closer an object’s position is fixed, the more its momentum can fluctuate into unknown territory. If the particle’s position is definitely close to the wall, it might have the energy to tunnel through. And if the particle is going with a certain momentum, and you’re certain of that, its position might not be what you think.
We know that particles do make use of quantum tunneling, which means, from a conventional point of view, that over short periods of time they must “borrow” energy from the universe. And Einstein proved that energy and mass are equivalent. If the universe can borrow energy, why not mass?
Borrowing implies that the energy will be returned. The auditor of this particular debt is the law of conservation of energy. This is something that has also been observed. We don’t see energy popping up out of nowhere. We don’t see mass popping into existence. But then again, we’re not looking at small enough objects, or short enough time spans. If, when things get below a certain distance, energy can briefly pop into being, then so can particles. Those particles can have all different momenta, if they’re in existence briefly enough. As the spaces over which they appear get smaller and the time periods get shorter, the energy in the particles can get bigger and bigger.
Einstein showed that spacetime is a physical thing, and that it can get bent and stretched with mass and energy. These huge fluctuations in mass and energy over tiny, tiny distances have to churn it up. Over short enough distances in space, there would be tiny black holes and tiny planets, each stretching spacetime the same way that regular black holes and planets do. So as we zoomed in on spacetime, it wouldn’t be a smooth stretch of fabric deformed gently by large planets, it would be churned up, in constant motion, because of these tiny, but massive, fluctuations. Instead of fabric, we have foam.
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Really enjoyed reading the black hole parts, thanks and keep this up!
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I myself am really enjoying the quantum mechanics stuff, my friend and I always end up theorizing about quantum computers and such.
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Today's theme: Quantum Mechanics: #3 Quantum Computers
1. A quantum computer is a computation device that makes direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data. Quantum computers are different from digital computers based on transistors. Whereas digital computers require data to be encoded into binary digits (bits), quantum computation uses quantum properties to represent data and perform operations on these data.
2. Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, experiments have been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits (quantum bits). Both practical and theoretical research continues, and many national government and military funding agencies support quantum computing research to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis.
3. Large-scale quantum computers will be able to solve certain problems much faster than any classical computer using the best currently known algorithms, like integer factorization using Shor's algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm)) or the simulation of quantum many-body systems. There exist quantum algorithms, such as Simon's algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%27s_algorithm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon%27s_algorithm)), which run faster than any possible probabilistic classical algorithm. Given sufficient computational resources, a classical computer could be made to simulate any quantum algorithm; quantum computation does not violate the Church–Turing thesis.
4. A classical computer has a memory made up of bits, where each bit represents either a one or a zero. A quantum computer maintains a sequence of qubits. A single qubit can represent a one, a zero, or any quantum superposition of these two qubit states; moreover, a pair of qubits can be in any quantum superposition of 4 states, and three qubits in any superposition of 8.
5. In general, a quantum computer with n qubits can be in an arbitrary superposition of up to 2^n different states simultaneously (this compares to a normal computer that can only be in one of these 2^n states at any one time).
6. A quantum computer operates by setting the qubits in a controlled initial state that represents the problem at hand and by manipulating those qubits with a fixed sequence of quantum logic gates. The sequence of gates to be applied is called a quantum algorithm. The calculation ends with measurement of all the states, collapsing each qubit into one of the two pure states, so the outcome can be at most n classical bits of information. An example of an implementation of qubits for a quantum computer could start with the use of particles with two spin states: "down" and "up" to represent 0 and 1.
7. To better understand what collapsing the wave function would look like, imagine the following analogy: your qubits in a superposition are putty, your quantum algorithms are this (http://www.thedesignschool.co.uk/de7300designresearchgroupg/files/wooden_toy_shape_sorter_block_box.jpg). Collapsing the wave function is like pushing the putty through a shape. Initially it looks like a blob, but when you push it in, it will take the shape of the hole. If you take the same putty, make it a blob again, and push it through another hole, it will take that shape this time. In a similar fashion the qubits take the "shape" of the solution of the problem, and the solution is defined by the quantum algorithm (a.k.a. the diagram of the logic gates).
If you've understood so far, you might be wondering: "well that's all fine and dandy, but what's the catch, why are the quantum computers supposed to be so much better?". Upcoming now:
8. Storage: One terabyte of information can store 243 discrete complex values before being full to 100% capacity. That means one trillion bits can store 243 values. By comparison, a mere 500 qubits can store 2500 values! Nielsen, Michael A. and Chuang, Isaac L. said in their book Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. p. 17. (31st Jan, 2011 | 10th edition) the following: "Trying to store all these complex numbers would not be possible on any conceivable classical computer."
9. Data transfer: Quantum entanglement, as detailed yesterday, will be the basis of communications between two quantum computers. Just imagine transferring almost endless amounts of data with AT LEAST 10.000 times the speed of light between any two computers that were entangled previously. This is almost literal "instant communication".
10. And last, but not least, the most critical advantage of a quantum computer, power consumption. Due to the fact that a quantum computer does not need to store data in the same way as a normal computer, it is enough to give it power just so it can set the values of the qubits before pushing them inside the logic gate. Qubits are particles, not energy, which means after they travel through the algorithm, they come back to the start line and get reinitialized. In case you can't directly see it, this means that once you turn on a quantum computer, it will stay on by itself. It's of such a high efficiency, that scientists estimate a quantum computer will use the equivalent power of a normal computer (in chunks because it uses it just for resetting the qubits) but offer hundreds of thousands of times the performance!
As a side note, Monday I will be starting with M-theory and it's implications on our world. If you would like more information on quantum computers, or you would like to have more of an essay style paper for this topic, let me know and I will postpone Monday's theme and discuss that instead.
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Okay, I am fucking interest in your Quantum computer, So more info would be more than welcome. A little off topic, did you know about A.I. stuff? How the brain think?
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Truly fascinating, i finally managed to get the time to read all that :)
Your posts about quantum mechanics made me a bit sad that i didn't learn my physics all that great, but i managed to keep up with it at least. More info on it would be great :)
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Most interesting stuff ever....+ 1
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Been really busy these past few days with my Bachelor's thesis so I didn't have time to give you any more cool stuff here, but I did prepare some material.
Hopefully I have time today. If not, then tomorrow.
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Today's theme: String Theory
1. String theory is an active research framework in particle physics that attempts to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a contender for a theory of everything (TOE), a self-contained mathematical model that describes all fundamental forces and forms of matter.
2. String theory posits that the elementary particles (i.e., electrons and quarks) within an atom are not 0-dimensional objects, but rather 1-dimensional oscillating lines ("strings").
3. These strings can oscillate, giving the observed particles their flavor, charge, mass, and spin. Among the modes of oscillation of the string is a massless, spin-two state—a graviton.
4. The existence of this graviton state and the fact that the equations describing string theory include Einstein's equations for general relativity mean that string theory is a quantum theory of gravity. Since string theory is widely believed to be mathematically consistent, many hope that it fully describes our universe, making it a theory of everything.
5. String theory is known to contain configurations that describe all the observed fundamental forces and matter but with a zero cosmological constant and some new fields. Other configurations have different values of the cosmological constant, and are metastable but long-lived.
6. This leads many to believe that there is at least one metastable solution that is quantitatively identical with the standard model, with a small cosmological constant, containing dark matter and a plausible mechanism for cosmic inflation. It is not yet known whether string theory has such a solution, nor how much freedom the theory allows to choose the details.
7. An intriguing feature of string theory is that it predicts extra dimensions. In classical string theory the number of dimensions is not fixed by any consistency criterion. However, to make a consistent quantum theory, string theory is required to live in a spacetime of the so-called "critical dimension": we must have 26 spacetime dimensions for the bosonic string and 10 for the superstring.
8. The closest theory that managed to merge all the needed prerequisites is the 11-dimensional M-theory, which requires spacetime to have eleven dimensions (including time), as opposed to the usual three spatial dimensions and the fourth dimension of time. The original string theories from the 1980s describe special cases of M-theory where the eleventh dimension is a very small circle or a line, and if these formulations are considered as fundamental, then string theory requires ten dimensions.
9. Nothing in Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism or Einstein's theory of relativity makes this kind of prediction; these theories require physicists to insert the number of dimensions manually and arbitrarily, and this number is fixed and independent of potential energy. String theory allows one to relate the number of dimensions to scalar potential energy.
10. Flat space string theories are 26-dimensional in the bosonic case, while superstring and M-theories turn out to involve 10 or 11 dimensions for flat solutions. In bosonic string theories, the 26 dimensions come from the Polyakov equation. Starting from any dimension greater than four, it is necessary to consider how these are reduced to four dimensional spacetime.
BONUS
11. In order for you guys to properly understand what you've just read, I offer you an old (2005) but still very very accurate explanation including visual helpers of String Theory and M-Theory. I will cover M-Theory in more detail to offer even more interesting information (discovered after the making of this video) and at the end, this post + video + next post should offer you a pretty decent image of the most basic, elementary, indivisible, simple explanation of what everything is made of: http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html (http://www.ted.com/talks/brian_greene_on_string_theory.html)
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+1 for that, the video really explained string theory in a great way.
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Today's theme: M-Theory
1. In theoretical physics, M-theory is an extension of string theory in which 11 dimensions are identified. Proponents believe that the 11-dimensional theory unites all five 10 dimensional string theories and supersedes them.
2. Drawing on the work of a number of string theorists (including Ashoke Sen, Chris Hull, Paul Townsend, Michael Duff and John Schwarz), Edward Witten of the Institute for Advanced Study suggested its existence at a conference at USC in 1995, and used M-theory to explain a number of previously observed dualities, initiating a flurry of new research in string theory called the second superstring revolution.
3. In the early 1990s, it was shown that the various superstring theories were related by dualities which allow the description of an object in one super string theory to be related to the description of a different object in another super string theory. These relationships imply that each of the super string theories is a different aspect of a single underlying theory, proposed by Witten, and named "M-theory".
4. In the standard string theories, strings are assumed to be the single fundamental constituent of the universe. M-theory adds another fundamental constituent - membranes. Like the tenth spatial dimension, the approximate equations in the original five superstring models proved too weak to reveal membranes.
5. A membrane, or brane, is a multidimensional object, usually called a P-brane, with P referring to the number of dimensions in which it exists. The value of 'P' can range from zero to nine, thus giving branes dimensions from zero (0-brane ≡ point particle) to nine - five more than the world we are accustomed to inhabiting.
6. The inclusion of p-branes does not render previous work in string theory wrong on account of not taking note of these P-branes. P-branes are much more massive ("heavier") than strings, and when all higher-dimensional P-branes are much more massive than strings, they can be ignored, as researchers had done unknowingly in the 1970s.
7. One of the reasons M-theory is so difficult to formulate is that the numbers of different types of membranes in the various dimensions increases exponentially. For example once one gets to 3-dimensional surfaces, one has to deal with solid objects with knot-shaped holes, and then one needs the whole of knot theory just to classify them.
8. Shortly after Witten's breakthrough in 1995, Joseph Polchinski of the University of California, Santa Barbara discovered a fairly obscure feature of string theory. He found that in certain situations the endpoints of strings (strings with "loose ends") would not be able to move with complete freedom as they were attached, or stuck within certain regions of space. Polchinski then reasoned that if the endpoints of open strings are restricted to move within some p-dimensional region of space, then that region of space must be occupied by a p-brane. These type of "sticky" branes are called Dirichlet-P-branes, or D-P-branes.
9. Not all strings are confined to p-branes. Strings with closed loops, like the graviton, are completely free to move from membrane to membrane. Of the four force carrier particles, the graviton is unique in this way.
10. Researchers speculate that this is the reason why investigation through the weak force, the strong force, and the electromagnetic force have not hinted at the possibility of extra dimensions. These force carrier particles are strings with endpoints that confine them to their p-branes. Further testing is needed in order to show that extra spatial dimensions indeed exist through experimentation with gravity.
BONUS
11. This is how the spatial dimensions would look like. So just like you know up-down, left-right, forward-back, each of the surfaces intertwining in the below picture represents A WHOLE SPATIAL DIMENSION. On each of these dimensions there is a vibrating string. As the dimensions move, the vibration of the string changes, and each unique pattern offers us an elementary particle. At the smallest of scales, this is (in theory) what absolutely EVERYTHING is made of, including empty space.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Calabi-Yau-alternate.png)
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Nice, haven't read it all but still.
Also, how is school doing? Going well?
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Can you explain more about how strings produce elementary particles please? I understand what is going on, but if strings are always moving to form another particle, wouldn't matter/energy be constantly growing? Are there only certain rare situations when strings are "twanged" to create new particles?
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Can you explain more about how strings produce elementary particles please? I understand what is going on, but if strings are always moving to form another particle, wouldn't matter/energy be constantly growing? Are there only certain rare situations when strings are "twanged" to create new particles?
Sure Uriah. Just let me wrap up my thesis (happening this week) and I will get back to updating this thread more often and I'll also make a special on that.
For today though, boy do I have a treat for you guys:
Today's theme: SPECIAL - Do we actually live in something akin to the Matrix? (i.e. is our Universe a simulation?)
(http://www.transcend.ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/TheMatrix.gif)
"
Dr. S. James Gates, Jr., a theoretical physicist, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, and the Director of The Center for String & Particle Theory, is reporting that certain string theory, super-symmetrical equations, which describe the fundamental nature of the Universe and reality, contain embedded computer codes.
These codes are digital data in the form of 1′s and 0′s. Not only that, these codes are the same as what make web browsers work and are error-correction codes! Gates says, “We have no idea what these ‘things’ are doing there”.
Gates discloses in the second video below, as an aside in a formal interview, that some of his research can be interpreted that we do live in a virtual reality. He describes this as “mind-blowing” and similar to the movie “The Matrix”! Further, he adds, that if someone suspected they did live in a virtual reality, then detecting computer codes would be a way to confirm. He concludes with finding these computer codes in equations that describe our world: “that’s what I just proposed!”.
What to make of this? There are two issues: 1) if String Theory will ultimately be a viable and therefore proven model of reality and 2) if so, whether embedded coding is in fact within the related verified equations. Michio Kaku has stated “String Theory Is the Only Game in Town (http://bit.ly/znhY8y)” because it is the only testable theory available.
We have argued on this website that the Universe is a virtual reality. If true, then any theory of reality should eventually confirm this, if the theory has staying power and does not succumb to an early death. Accordingly, time is on the side of the simulation hypothesis to be verified first through theory and then via experiments in the long-run. Technology to provide the means to test that the Universe is a virtual reality is the next step.
“Doubly-even self-dual linear binary error-correcting block code,” first invented by Claude Shannon in the 1940′s, has been discovered embedded WITHIN the equations of superstring theory! Why does nature have this? What errors does it need to correct? What is an ‘error’ for nature? More importantly what is the explanation for this freakish discovery? Your guess is as good as mine."
Dr. S. James Gates video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LCVknKUJ4&feature=player_embedded (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LCVknKUJ4&feature=player_embedded)
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Excellent contribution! That was the most interesting I've ever seen lol. Just wondering why that video was 2012 and I hadn't heard of it yet. Glad to hear the voices of some of my favorite scientists as well.
+1.
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THESIS IS OVER!!! So it's time to bring the often updates I promised! Today a light one for you guys ;)
Today's theme: Various
1. Children allowed to watch R-Rated movies are more likely to start drinking at an early age.
2. Environment and context is a bigger contributor to overeating than the quality of the food. For instance, if given stale, week-old popcorn, people who typically eat popcorn at a movie theater will continue to eat as much as they normally do regardless of the quality of popcorn, while people who do not typically eat popcorn at movie theaters will eat less stale popcorn than they will fresh popcorn.
3. Fatherhood decreases a man’s levels of testosterone, turning them into ninnies.
4. Twitterers are happiest in the morning, and most miserable around 3-4 p.m. each day.
5. If you wear black clothing, people are more likely to mentally associate you with immorality.
6. Facebook status updates and images create an illusion of happiness, and when others see that illusion, it often makes them feel depressed that their lives are not as happy as the illusory lives depicted in Facebook profiles.
7. The irony to the above fact is that narcissists and people with low self-esteem tend to spend the most amount of time on Facebook.
8. Every argument between a couple boils down to one of two fundamental complaints: One person feels that he or she is being blamed or controlled, unjustly, for something that has nothing to do with the argument, or one feels neglected, and this manifests in the feeling of “you don’t really care about me” or “you are not as invested as I am.”
9. The use of profanity actually increases one’s tolerance for pain.
10. Scientifically, men are not objectively any funnier than women, they simply make more attempts at humor than females do.
11. Men actually get stupider when they talk to a pretty woman: article (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/6132718/Men-lose-their-minds-speaking-to-pretty-women.html).
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about damn time you put out more facts!
anyway i would love sources for #1 and #9 :P
Oh and question @ #1 - I started drinking young, and watching R rated movies, but the drinking was allowed in my family as long as i did it at home. In other words my parents preferred me to drink safely at home than out and about while trying to hide it from them. i think this is nothing more than an intelligent decision where it can be both monitored and taught responsibly. But also that while this does follow the statement of "fact" it is not the proper association. ie i drank because i watched R rated movies, but that i drank/watched r rated movies because my parents didnt treat me like an idiot who was going to light the school on fire because i saw it on TV.
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about damn time you put out more facts!
anyway i would love sources for #1 and #9 :P
#1 - http://www.avclub.com/articles/rrated-movies-lead-to-underage-drinking-says-scien,40516/
#9 - http://scienceblogs.com/neurophilosophy/2009/07/13/swearing-increases-pain-tolerance/
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Today's theme: The Nebular Hypothesis
1. Cosmogony (or cosmogeny) is any scientific theory concerning the coming into existence (or origin) of either the cosmos (or Universe), or the so-called "reality" of sentient beings.
2. In cosmogony, the nebular hypothesis is the most widely accepted model explaining the formation and evolution of the Solar System.
3.There is evidence that it was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg. Originally applied only to our own Solar System, this method of planetary system formation is now thought to be at work throughout the Universe.
4. According to the nebular hypothesis, stars form in massive and dense clouds of molecular hydrogen—giant molecular clouds (GMC). They are gravitationally unstable, and matter coalesces to smaller denser clumps within, which then proceed to collapse and form stars.
5. Star formation is a complex process, which always produces a gaseous protoplanetary disk around the young star. This may give birth to planets in certain circumstances, which are not well known. Thus the formation of planetary systems is thought to be a natural result of star formation. A sun-like star usually takes around 100 million years to form.
6. The protoplanetary disk is an accretion disk which proceeds to feed the central star. Initially very hot, the disk later cools in what is known as the T tauri star stage; here, formation of small dust grains made of rocks and ices is possible.
7. The grains may eventually coagulate into kilometer-sized planetesimals. If the disk is massive enough the runaway accretions begin, resulting in the rapid—100,000 to 300,000 years—formation of Moon- to Mars-sized planetary embryos.
8. Near the star, the planetary embryos go through a stage of violent mergers, producing a few terrestrial planets. The last stage takes around 100 million to a billion years.
9. The formation of giant planets is a more complicated process. It is thought to occur beyond the so-called snow line, where planetary embryos are mainly made of various ices. As a result they are several times more massive than in the inner part of the protoplanetary disk.
10. What follows after the embryo formation is not completely clear. However, some embryos appear to continue to grow and eventually reach 5–10 Earth masses—the threshold value, which is necessary to begin accretion of the hydrogen–helium gas from the disk. The accumulation of gas by the core is initially a slow process, which continues for several million years, but after the forming protoplanet reaches about 30 Earth masses it accelerates and proceeds in a runaway manner. The Jupiter and Saturn–like planets are thought to accumulate the bulk of their mass during only 10,000 years. The accretion stops when the gas is exhausted. The formed planets can migrate over long distances during or after their formation. The ice giants like Uranus and Neptune are thought to be failed cores, which formed too late when the disk had almost disappeared.
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funny how even your "refresher" information puts a smile on my face. thanks man.
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Today's theme: Does every Black Hole contain a new Universe inside of it!?
1. Falling into a black hole may not be as final as it seems. Apply a quantum theory of gravity to these bizarre objects and the all-crushing singularity at their core disappears. In its place is something that looks a lot like an entry point to another Universe. Most immediately, that could help resolve the nagging information loss paradox that dogs black holes.
2. Though no human is likely to fall into a black hole anytime soon, imagining what would happen if they did is a great way to probe some of the biggest mysteries in the Universe. Most recently this has led to something known as the black hole firewall paradox – but black holes have long been a source of cosmic puzzles.
3. According to Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity, if a black hole swallows you, your chances of survival are nil. You'll first be torn apart by the black hole's tidal forces, a process whimsically named spaghettification. Eventually, you'll reach the singularity, where the gravitational field is infinitely strong. At that point, you'll be crushed to an infinite density. Unfortunately, general relativity provides no basis for working out what happens next. "When you reach the singularity in general relativity, physics just stops, the equations break down," says Abhay Ashtekar of Pennsylvania State University.
4. The same problem crops up when trying to explain the Big Bang, which is thought to have started with a singularity. So in 2006, Ashtekar and colleagues applied loop quantum gravity to the birth of the Universe. LQG combines general relativity with quantum mechanics and defines space-time as a web of indivisible chunks of about 10-35 meters (Planck scale) in size. The team found that as they rewound time in an LQG Universe, they reached the Big Bang, but no singularity – instead they crossed a "quantum-bridge" into another older Universe! This is the basis for the "big bounce" theory of our Universe's origins.
5. Now Jorge Pullin at Louisiana State University and Rodolfo Gambini at the University of the Republic in Montevideo, Uruguay, have applied LQG on a much smaller scale – to an individual black hole – in the hope of removing that singularity too. To simplify things, the pair applied the equations of LQG to a model of a spherically symmetrical, non-rotating "Schwarzschild" black hole.
6. In this new model, the gravitational field still increases as you near the black hole's core. But unlike previous models, this doesn't end in a singularity.
7. Instead gravity eventually reduces, as if you've come out the other end of the black hole and landed either in another region of our Universe, or another Universe altogether. Despite only holding for a simple model of a black hole, the researchers – and Ashtekar – believe the theory may banish singularities from real black holes too.
8. That would mean that black holes can serve as portals to other Universes. While other theories, not to mention some works of science fiction, have suggested this, the trouble was that nothing could pass through the portal because of the singularity.
9. The removal of the singularity is unlikely to be of immediate practical use, but it could help with at least one of the paradoxes surrounding black holes, the information loss problem.
10. A black hole soaks up information along with the matter it swallows, but black holes are also supposed to evaporate over time. That would cause the information to disappear forever, defying quantum theory. But if a black hole has no singularity, then the information needn't be lost – it may just tunnel its way through to another Universe. "Information doesn't disappear, it leaks out," says Pullin.
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Ive never heard of loop quantum gravity before. Is it not a very popular theory? Because that would mean they reconciled quantum mechanics with general relativity, right?
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Ive never heard of loop quantum gravity before. Is it not a very popular theory? Because that would mean they reconciled quantum mechanics with general relativity, right?
Yes and not exactly at the same time. They explain gravity interaction over distances on the Planck scale (String scale) rather than conventional description as given by Newton. Now, when they applied this description of gravity over the default equations, they got the stuff I mentioned above.
At the moment LQG and String Theory are currently two separate theories. The issue is that String Theory also has an explanation for gravity, but it's not so nice. Most scientists think that the Unified Theory will probably contain LQG as the explanation for gravity, and strings as an explanation for the rest of the forces and such. Something along those lines.
The key point is that there are still a few theories on how gravity and the quantum world relate, and there is no 5-sigma proof for any of them yet. The juicy part is that until now, even though String Theory has dominated every field, LQG still makes more sense when discussing only and only gravity. This has an amazing potential because the laws of physics seem to be matching perfectly with the description of a Universe existing literally inside the most massive black hole ever!
Also if indeed black-holes have no singularity, we've just uncovered the real-world wormhole...
A truly amazing discovery with so many implications to not only science, but how humanity perceives itself and its place in the Universe!
God fucking damn it I want a cyborg body (2045 Initiative (http://2045initiative.com/)) and a space-ship (NASA working on the warp-engine (http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive))...
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Yes and not exactly at the same time. They explain gravity interaction over distances on the Planck scale (String scale) rather than conventional description as given by Newton. Now, when they applied this description of gravity over the default equations, they got the stuff I mentioned above.
At the moment LQG and String Theory are currently two separate theories. The issue is that String Theory also has an explanation for gravity, but it's not so nice. Most scientists think that the Unified Theory will probably contain LQG as the explanation for gravity, and strings as an explanation for the rest of the forces and such. Something along those lines.
The key point is that there are still a few theories on how gravity and the quantum world relate, and there is no 5-sigma proof for any of them yet. The juicy part is that until now, even though String Theory has dominated every field, LQG still makes more sense when discussing only and only gravity. This has an amazing potential because the laws of physics seem to be matching perfectly with the description of a Universe existing literally inside the most massive black hole ever!
Also if indeed black-holes have no singularity, we've just uncovered the real-world wormhole...
A truly amazing discovery with so many implications to not only science, but how humanity perceives itself and its place in the Universe!
God fucking damn it I want a cyborg body (2045 Initiative (http://2045initiative.com/)) and a space-ship (NASA working on the warp-engine (http://gizmodo.com/5942634/nasa-starts-development-of-real-life-star-trek-warp-drive))...
It was my understanding the chief problem with this is that we would still be seeing new matter flowing into our universe if this was the case. instead of all all signs pointing to a single event.
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What you're referring to is what's known as a White Hole. Still theoretical and indeed no proof has been seen of one existing.
Well, except for the Big Bang that is. It might be the case that a black hole is not really a portal, but rather it is an "egg" containing another Universe within itself.
In the aforementioned situation, the BigBang covers all the matter that gets sucked into the black holes which currently exist in our Universe.
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Why a cyborg body? Biotech would be a much more comfortable solution :D
Thanks for this thread again Mordred. I continue to enjoy it.
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Why a cyborg body? Biotech would be a much more comfortable solution :D
If you get hit by a car and die that's the end. But if you have a cyborg body and a backup of your mind/consciousness you don't have to worry about that. You can always 'restore' this mind to an avatar.
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Not really. You could just store your body schematics on live update and have nanobots restore you. Auto-repair would be far easier than in a cyborg. Being a robot would make life so much less fun, and would distance you from others.
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Not really. You could just store your body schematics on live update and have nanobots restore you. Auto-repair would be far easier than in a cyborg. Being a robot would make life so much less fun, and would distance you from others.
i want to upload my mind, then use my mental powers to take over every PC on the planet. then start a war with man kind, which i will win, then i will put all human beings into pods to feed me energy after they scorch the skys. i will insert their brains into a virtual world that feels like the real world that is behind its own separate network so that try as they might they can never attack me. If they start rising up against me i will simply flush all the programming (ie their brains) and use the very machines they are hooked too to keep them medically alive so that i continue to have power. After some time has passed a new generation can be inserted into the VR world with a valuable lesson in place: behave or else. MWAHAHAHA
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i want to upload my mind, then use my mental powers to take over every PC on the planet. then start a war with man kind, which i will win, then i will put all human beings into pods to feed me energy after they scorch the skys. i will insert their brains into a virtual world that feels like the real world that is behind its own separate network so that try as they might they can never attack me. If they start rising up against me i will simply flush all the programming (ie their brains) and use the very machines they are hooked too to keep them medically alive so that i continue to have power. After some time has passed a new generation can be inserted into the VR world with a valuable lesson in place: behave or else. MWAHAHAHA
@Uriah Basically this ^
Hehe, no really now. I don't really see why you differentiate between cyborgs and biotech, given that a pozitronic brain is the pinnacle of R&D for robotics and biotech engineering ^^
Once we have the possibility of having a full cyborg body, robotics and biotech will have already been merged into one field/area of study. At least according to Mr. Isaac Asimov (and he hasn't been wrong until now ;) ).
On the other hand, if you want to discuss having just a cyborg body and keeping your brain (let's assume that research has not gotten that far yet), then for sure I would go robot and not biotech, because a robotic body will be more sturdy, complete, modular, easy to repair and replace and most importantly you will have the ability to adjust not only your physical strength but also your stimuli perception.
For instance, if I'm about to get punched in the face (ROBOT FACE FUCK YEA), I might turn off the pain receptors in there so that I don't have the 0.2 - 0.3 seconds of downtime due to my brain freaking out due to pain. Hence I can retaliate or defend myself faster, better and more efficiently (of course that's not an issue with a full robotic body, but just as an example).
And last but not least, you can survive the environment of space without the need for a protective suit. That would mean that space exploration would take a drastic new turn in that there would be no need to focus 90% of your efforts on protecting the crew, as their bodies are strong enough inherently.
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I will fight to the end :D
With biotech you can have nanobots running around within you, monitoring, repairing, limiting stimuli as you please. A suit isn't so bad for space, because we won't be out in open space much anyways. Robotics, it seems to me, will be an external thing, whereas biotech goes within. I take my ideas from Ray Kurzweil, who hasn't been wrong 'up until now' :)
Also, what about sex!?
Lol, in any case, im very excited for the future of technology and possible options for immortality. Being a robot is better than being dead, i suppose. :)
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I take my ideas from Ray Kurzweil, who hasn't been wrong 'up until now' :)
You look forward to the technological singularity?
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You look forward to the technological singularity?
From my personal point of view it can't come fast enough.
Today's theme: Insects! Yeah baby!
1. For every person on the earth, there are two hundred million insects. More insects can be found in only ten square feet of rainforest than there are people in Manhattan. One square mile of rural land can hold more insects than there are human beings on Earth.
2. Over 900,000 known species of insects exist throughout the world.
3. Each year, insects eat about a third of the world’s food crops.
4. In contrast, each year the average person will “eat” several insects while they are sleeping. During the average lifetime, a person consumes about seventy insects and ten spiders during their sleep. According to some sources, beetles have a taste that is similar to apples while wasps taste like pine nuts.
5. The Department of Health and Human Services has set standards regarding how many insect parts are food can contain, called the Food Defect Action Levels. Chocolate can have up to eight insect fragments per hundred grams, while peanut butter can have only sixty fragments. Meanwhile, wheat flour can have 150 fragments per hundred grams and paprika can have 300 fragments.
6. The smallest insect in the world, the Tanzanian parasitic wasp, is smaller than the eye on a housefly. The largest insect is the goliath beetle, which can grow up to four and half inches long.
7. Slavery is not strictly a human condition. Amazon ants will steal larvae of other ants to be their slaves. They depend upon these slaves for their survival because Amazon ants are incapable of doing anything other than fight.
8. An ant is capable of lifting fifty times its own weight and is capable pulling thirty times its own weight.
9. The most dangerous ant in the world is the black bulldog ant. It lives in Australia and has killed several human beings. When provoked, it stings and bites at the same time.
10. There are about a million ants per person. Ants are very social animals and will live in colonies that can contain almost 500,000 ants.
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Today's theme: More Insects!
1. A flea can jump about two hundred times the length of their body, which is about thirteen inches. This is the equivalent to a six foot tall human jumping nine hundred feet.
2. A cockroach can live nine days without eating. This is also the same amount of time that the body of a cockroach can live after its head has been cut off before it eventually dies from starvation.
3. Mosquitoes have forty-seven teeth. They do not use these to bite, however. Instead, they have a proboscis, which is a tubular appendage.
4. Mosquitoes are more likely to bite children than adults, blonde-haired people rather than brown-haired people, and people wearing dark clothing. They are also attracted to people who just ate bananas or finished exercising. This is because foods high in potassium and exercising cause your body to release lactic acid, which is attractive to mosquitoes.
5. Citronella does not repel mosquitoes through its smell. Mosquitoes dislike citronella because it irritates its feet.
6. Mosquitoes are responsible causing the most human deaths worldwide than any other animal-almost two million annually. They do this by transmitting diseases such as the West Nile virus, malaria, and Dengue fever. Second to this is the tsetse fly, which kills about 66,000 people annually.
7. Dragonflies are capable of flying sixty miles per hour, making them one of the fastest insects. This is good since they are in a big hurry, as they only live about twenty-four hours.
8. Flies jump backwards during takeoff.
9. A housefly will regurgitate its food and eat it again.
10. Termites outweigh humans by almost ten to one.
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Today's theme: The Amazing Human Brain: Part I
1. Weight. The weight of the human brain is about 3 lbs.
2. Cerebrum. The cerebrum is the largest part of the brain and makes up 85% of the brain’s weight.
3. Skin. Your skin weighs twice as much as your brain.
4. Gray matter. The brain’s gray matter is made up of neurons, which gather and transmit signals.
5. White matter. The white matter is made up of dendrites and axons, which create the network by which neurons send their signals.
6. Gray and white. Your brain is 60% white matter and 40% gray matter.
7. Water. The brain is made up of about 75% water.
8. Neurons. Your brain consists of about 100 billion neurons.
9. Synapses. There are anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 synapses for each neuron.
10. No pain. There are no pain receptors in the brain, so the brain can feel no pain.
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Today's theme: The Amazing Human Brain: Part II
1. Largest brain. While an elephant’s brain is physically larger than a human brain, the human brain is 2% of total body weight (compared to 0.15% of an elephant’s brain), meaning humans have the largest brain to body size.
2. Blood vessels. There are 100,000 miles of blood vessels in the brain.
3. Fat. The human brain is the fattest organ in the body and may consists of at least 60% fat.
4. Neurons. Neurons develop at the rate of 250,000 neurons per minute during early pregnancy.
5. Size at birth. At birth, your brain was almost the same size as an adult brain and contained most of the brain cells for your whole life.
6. Newborn’s growth. A newborn baby’s brain grows about three times its size in the first year.
7. Stopped growing. Your brain stopped growing at age 18.
8. Cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex grows thicker as you learn to use it.
9. Stimulation. A stimulating environment for a child can make the difference between a 25% greater ability to learn or 25% less in an environment with little stimulation.
10. New neurons. Humans continue to make new neurons throughout life in response to mental activity.
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sorry for reply but..
"dragonflies live for years as larvae, and adults can live for months."