fwiw, a tangential comment, jorge-cham, is also the progenitor of phd comics.
What Is Space?
11–20 of 155 posts
Re: What Is Space?
#12Jesus fucking Christ, who fucking cares? It's space, there's some objects, humanity needs to colonize it. That's all there is if you want to take action. It's like a company that makes great and not-so-great-but-useful products stopping and wondering "why are we doing this? Why do we exist?" You won't exist forever, so just do it. Some people with enough free time and money can do the philosophies, the rest need to f…
Why do something if you don't understand why something?
Why do nothing if you don't understand why something?
Re: What Is Space?
#13How fast are you really going? One of the things I've thought about is relatively. Consider a toddler strapped to his car seat in a luxurious BMW cocoon while his father speeds down the autobahn at 200km/h. He calmy drinks from his sippy cup. You're in a passenger jet above him going 700km/hr. You're going 500km/hr faster than him. But how fast are you really going? Consider that the Earth is spinning around the sun…
We generally give Albert Einstein credit for providing a definitive answer to this question, and we call it the Theory of Special Relativity.
Here, you might like this:
Re: What Is Space?
#14One thing about space that I didn't see mentioned in the article is that even in a complete vacuum billions of miles away from anywhere there is still inertia. If something spins around it will still experience centrifugal force, so this is an absolute property of space and the universe that isn't caused by interaction with another body.
Re: What Is Space?
#15How fast are you really going? One of the things I've thought about is relatively. Consider a toddler strapped to his car seat in a luxurious BMW cocoon while his father speeds down the autobahn at 200km/h. He calmy drinks from his sippy cup. You're in a passenger jet above him going 700km/hr. You're going 500km/hr faster than him. But how fast are you really going? Consider that the Earth is spinning around the sun…
Regarding the speed of galaxies, there is the astrophysical concept of comoving observers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comoving_distance
I stumbled upon this, when I searched for the question: is there any point in talking about the age of the Universe if there is no absolute reference frame? There is a good stackexchange page about this too: https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/6525/age-of-th...
Re: What Is Space?
#16Some related questions that I don't know where, or how, to ask:
- Is there a “quantum” of space? Where/how is location stored?
- If electromagnetic repulsion is what makes matter “take space”, and if virtually all macroscopic phenomena are governed by electromagnetism and gravity, then could this reality be said to be “gravelectromagnetic”, and might there be other “dimensions” governed by other forces, like “cones” extending in differing “directions” from the subatomic scale? [0]
- Could gravity be the result of space trying to deflate/return to the pre-Big Bang singularity, kind of like pulling magnets apart? i.e. is gravity the “opposite” of, or a reaction to, “space?”
Re: What Is Space?
#17Re: What Is Space?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you mind elaborating? Or pointing me in the direction of material that explains the space goo issue. thx
The biggest issue I see with the goo metaphor, is that it seems to suggest some sort of stationary ether that we move through as we move through space. That is to say, the mathaphor suggests that it makes sense to differentiate between stationary objects and moving objects in an objective sense. However, the core insight of relativity is that there is no such distinction.
This seems like a inevitable issue with any metaphor. It will always supply unwanted associations.
Re: What Is Space?
#19How fast are you really going? One of the things I've thought about is relatively. Consider a toddler strapped to his car seat in a luxurious BMW cocoon while his father speeds down the autobahn at 200km/h. He calmy drinks from his sippy cup. You're in a passenger jet above him going 700km/hr. You're going 500km/hr faster than him. But how fast are you really going? Consider that the Earth is spinning around the sun…
A sibling post talked about special relativity, but you don't need special relativity to answer this question, just Galilean relativity. The answer is that you can measure velocity in any inertial reference frame you want. If you are in an inertial reference frame, you can say your own speed is 0 km/hr, or you can consider an inertial reference frame of the galaxy, which is some ungodly number, or you can measure your velocity relative to the cosmic microwave background. It's all the same -- only the relative velocity between you and another object has a real physical meaning.
Re: What Is Space?
#20How fast are you really going? One of the things I've thought about is relatively. Consider a toddler strapped to his car seat in a luxurious BMW cocoon while his father speeds down the autobahn at 200km/h. He calmy drinks from his sippy cup. You're in a passenger jet above him going 700km/hr. You're going 500km/hr faster than him. But how fast are you really going? Consider that the Earth is spinning around the sun…
A sibling post talked about special relativity, but you don't need special relativity to answer this question, just Galilean relativity. The answer is that you can measure velocity in any inertial reference frame you want. If you are in an inertial reference frame, you can say your own speed is 0 km/hr, or you can consider an inertial reference frame of the galaxy, which is some ungodly number, or you can measure you…
That is to say, everything is in an inertial reference frame, so there is no absolute center.
Just like we can only mark a distance traveled as from a starting point.