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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 17, 2008 20:29:02 GMT -5
I wish your sig would kind of circle the sun so that we actually know the scale. Pointing doesn't really show how big it is unless you can actually SEE it.
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 18, 2008 12:32:09 GMT -5
well thats the problem, the Milky Way is so tremendously gigantic that it's incredible difficult to even zoom in to it. In fact the only reason you can see stars in that whole mess is because they emit so much light and energy they look bigger. Our sun is so insignifigant compared to the trillions of stars in our galaxy alone. Then between all the stars is these gigantic gaps of dark interstellar space that have absolutely nothing in them. It would take our whole lifetime to travel to another star at the rate in which were able to travel today. We have an interstellar probe which has been traveling throungh space from Earth for 20+ years now and it hasn't even cleared the outer boundaries of our solar system yet, let alone the 4-6 light years of space between us and the nearest solar systems to ours. Our sun is such an insignificant speck of light in comparison to the galaxy itself which is about 100,00 light-years across and 1,000 light years thick. The distances in space are basically incomprehensible to the human mind. Plus we can't even see the milky way from afar so the only way to get a good picture of where we are is by measuring our position against the position of the other trillion stars in the sky. From there we can make a somewhat acurate picture of our galaxy, but theres so much of it we don't know.
It's really just impossible to think about. And thats only our galaxy alone. Theres billions, maybe even trillions of other galaxys out in the whole universe, each one millions of light years away from each other, and our galaxy is only considered a medium sized galaxy. Our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is much bigger then us and is in fact on a collision course with our galaxy. In 3 billion years our galaxy and the andromeda galaxy are gonna hit each other and creat a super galaxy, but in the process it's gonna destroy most of the stars and planets in both galaxies and there's gonna be a lot of supernova explosions and other mayhem.
But we'll be dead by then....So its cool ;D
By the way I updated the picture. Turns out NASA discovered we only have two main arms of our galaxy and two minor arms. Plus the new picture is more like a map and gives you a better relative picture of our sun too so...enjoy ;D
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 18, 2008 15:46:39 GMT -5
well thats the problem, the Milky Way is so tremendously gigantic that it's incredible difficult to even zoom in to it. In fact the only reason you can see stars in that whole mess is because they emit so much light and energy they look bigger. Our sun is so insignifigant compared to the trillions of stars in our galaxy alone. Then between all the stars is these gigantic gaps of dark interstellar space that have absolutely nothing in them. It would take our whole lifetime to travel to another star at the rate in which were able to travel today. We have an interstellar probe which has been traveling throungh space from Earth for 20+ years now and it hasn't even cleared the outer boundaries of our solar system yet, let alone the 4-6 light years of space between us and the nearest solar systems to ours. Our sun is such an insignificant speck of light in comparison to the galaxy itself which is about 100,00 light-years across and 1,000 light years thick. The distances in space are basically incomprehensible to the human mind. Plus we can't even see the milky way from afar so the only way to get a good picture of where we are is by measuring our position against the position of the other trillion stars in the sky. From there we can make a somewhat acurate picture of our galaxy, but theres so much of it we don't know. It's really just impossible to think about. And thats only our galaxy alone. Theres billions, maybe even trillions of other galaxys out in the whole universe, each one millions of light years away from each other, and our galaxy is only considered a medium sized galaxy. Our nearest neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy, is much bigger then us and is in fact on a collision course with our galaxy. In 3 billion years our galaxy and the andromeda galaxy are gonna hit each other and creat a super galaxy, but in the process it's gonna destroy most of the stars and planets in both galaxies and there's gonna be a lot of supernova explosions and other mayhem. But we'll be dead by then....So its cool ;D By the way I updated the picture. Turns out NASA discovered we only have two main arms of our galaxy and two minor arms. Plus the new picture is more like a map and gives you a better relative picture of our sun too so...enjoy ;D But if a star's light rays reach out THAT far and are THAT bright, and we are THIS close to the sun, imagine how dark and cold it would be to get outside of our sun's reach.
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 18, 2008 22:54:45 GMT -5
exactly. There's barely any heat and absolutely no light in interstellar space. The only light you can see is the light from the stars. For example, if you had a spaceship in interstellar space without windows or lights on it, it would be a big black shape. The only way you would see it is by seeing it's outline in front of the light from any background stars shining light years away. It's as close to a void as you could get without leaving the universe entirely.
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 19, 2008 18:52:33 GMT -5
exactly. There's barely any heat and absolutely no light in interstellar space. The only light you can see is the light from the stars. For example, if you had a spaceship in interstellar space without windows or lights on it, it would be a big black shape. The only way you would see it is by seeing it's outline in front of the light from any background stars shining light years away. It's as close to a void as you could get without leaving the universe entirely. Hmmm... so you're saying that giant space eels are wandering around in the darkness waiting for a space ship to fly by so that they can attack?
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 19, 2008 21:15:10 GMT -5
Ya there copuld be....or maybe giant robots that were built by some long lost civilization, and thier only purpose is to cut down sentient life wherever it grows, but the reason they are doing it is because they don;t want sentient life to be aruound whenever the Andromeda galaxy hits us, so then there will be no life that has to die and then they would potentially be saving us from a brutal horrifying death
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 22, 2008 22:24:22 GMT -5
Ya there copuld be....or maybe giant robots that were built by some long lost civilization, and thier only purpose is to cut down sentient life wherever it grows, but the reason they are doing it is because they don;t want sentient life to be aruound whenever the Andromeda galaxy hits us, so then there will be no life that has to die and then they would potentially be saving us from a brutal horrifying death True... but don't you think in 3 billion years, the humans will go through some form of evolution... I mean, if you think what life was like 400 years ago and compare that to the present, in 3 billion years we'll probably be able to teleport with our minds and live forever. Heck, that'll probably happen in the next thousand years. New technology will speed up the process. That, or we'll all die from war. Either way, we won't be around anymore.
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 23, 2008 0:42:49 GMT -5
True.....but what if we do survive? If people could make a implant that could cause Immortality, everyone would live forever, but it wouldn't stop them from dying in other ways like car crashes, or bombs, or other galaxyies hitting us. And evolution would be tough...I mean...We might evolve a little just to enhance ourselves, like the ability to move stuff with our minds, but I don't think even teleportation is achieveable throuygh evolution. In fact the only way we could ever escape our fate of galaxyies colliding and suns exploding would be either to somehow discover a type of superluminal travel and get to anywhere we want very quickly, or we build giant spaceships and somehow find a way to travel thousands of lightyears through intergalactic space (which would take hundreds of lifetimes at a rate of 1/8th of lightspeed) and find a new galaxy to live in. However both of those are wayyyyyyyaayyyayayayy beyond us, even in a million years that'd be had to do. But your right. We do have 3 billion years to figure it out...granted we don't all become extinct before we even colonize another planet
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 23, 2008 20:36:35 GMT -5
True.....but what if we do survive? If people could make a implant that could cause Immortality, everyone would live forever, but it wouldn't stop them from dying in other ways like car crashes, or bombs, or other galaxyies hitting us. And evolution would be tough...I mean...We might evolve a little just to enhance ourselves, like the ability to move stuff with our minds, but I don't think even teleportation is achieveable throuygh evolution. In fact the only way we could ever escape our fate of galaxyies colliding and suns exploding would be either to somehow discover a type of superluminal travel and get to anywhere we want very quickly, or we build giant spaceships and somehow find a way to travel thousands of lightyears through intergalactic space (which would take hundreds of lifetimes at a rate of 1/8th of lightspeed) and find a new galaxy to live in. However both of those are wayyyyyyyaayyyayayayy beyond us, even in a million years that'd be had to do. But your right. We do have 3 billion years to figure it out...granted we don't all become extinct before we even colonize another planet True... but like I said, technology will be like steroids to evolution. It's only a matter of time before we start seeing chips being inserted into the brain. And plus we'll probably have spread out in our galaxy so much that if Andromeda does hit us, who cares? In 3 billion years, moving from one area of the galaxy to another will be like looking across the room. I mean seriously. 3 BILLION years.
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 24, 2008 13:23:43 GMT -5
yeah thats true, but then again you never know. In a million years we may discover an alien race or a virus that destroys almost all of our acomplishments and almost wipes out humanity and sets us back millions of years. Or, theres a big civil war that happens soon and because of it we get set back hundreds of years and where if there was no war we might have colonized other planets, but because there is a war we get stuck on Earth for millions of years. But you have a point. Billions is a lot of time. But then again, thats also a lot of time for things to go wrong. As for traveling across the galaxy in a blink of the eye...thats way harder...the only remotely possible way to get from star to star without it taking years would be to find a way to stop inertia itself and to cause matter to lose all properties of weight and movement for an instant and travel faster then light itself. And thats ridiculously difficult. It;s basically impossible. Maybe in at least half a billion years. And thats serious, unless alien technology somehow propels us forward, but thats kinda unlikely. Still theres a lot of time and we'll probably just get hit by Mercury anyways before we even get to other suns so...
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 25, 2008 7:10:19 GMT -5
yeah thats true, but then again you never know. In a million years we may discover an alien race or a virus that destroys almost all of our acomplishments and almost wipes out humanity and sets us back millions of years. Or, theres a big civil war that happens soon and because of it we get set back hundreds of years and where if there was no war we might have colonized other planets, but because there is a war we get stuck on Earth for millions of years. But you have a point. Billions is a lot of time. But then again, thats also a lot of time for things to go wrong. As for traveling across the galaxy in a blink of the eye...thats way harder...the only remotely possible way to get from star to star without it taking years would be to find a way to stop inertia itself and to cause matter to lose all properties of weight and movement for an instant and travel faster then light itself. And thats ridiculously difficult. It;s basically impossible. Maybe in at least half a billion years. And thats serious, unless alien technology somehow propels us forward, but thats kinda unlikely. Still theres a lot of time and we'll probably just get hit by Mercury anyways before we even get to other suns so... True... but if Mercury hits us, I'll be super pissed.
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 25, 2008 14:47:43 GMT -5
Yeah it could hit us. Jupiter is so big it throws off Mercury's orbit and there's like a 1 in 100 chance of it...
A. hitting us. B. hitting mars C. getting flung out of the solar system.
Look it up. it's prettty neat. 1/100 might be wrong too. I can't remember exactly.
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Post by Joppo Gwappo on Aug 25, 2008 21:03:20 GMT -5
Yeah it could hit us. Jupiter is so big it throws off Mercury's orbit and there's like a 1 in 100 chance of it... A. hitting us. B. hitting mars C. getting flung out of the solar system. Look it up. it's prettty neat. 1/100 might be wrong too. I can't remember exactly. Looking it up... First off it's Venus, not Mars... (not hatin', just tellin') I just found this quote to be alarming... To call this catastrophic is a gross understatement. Such an impact would kill all life on our planet. Nothing would survive. By contrast, the asteroid that doomed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was likely just 6 miles in diameter; Mercury is 3,032 miles across. The last time an object about that size hit the Earth, the resulting debris formed our Moon. |
And yeah, it's 1%. But I don't get the 1% part. How is the time being measured? It just says a 1% chance that it does it before the sun explodes in 5 billion years. Is it 1% of a billion years? A million? Is Mercury rolling a 100-sided dice every thousand years waiting for it's chance to strike?
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Post by Gigaba 13 on Aug 26, 2008 4:02:46 GMT -5
God dammit.
Way to have an educational conversation while I'm not around to participate.
Bah!
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Post by DarkPheonix56 on Aug 26, 2008 14:49:15 GMT -5
And yeah, it's 1%. But I don't get the 1% part. How is the time being measured? It just says a 1% chance that it does it before the sun explodes in 5 billion years. Is it 1% of a billion years? A million? Is Mercury rolling a 100-sided dice every thousand years waiting for it's chance to strike? yes in fact it is rolling a 100 sided dice. The only problem is that since space is a vacuum the dice never stops so Mercury will never know when to get flung out of orbit! Thus we win! ;D
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