Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
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Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#2>These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tons, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza
Five billion tons packed within a teaspoon volume!? Incredible.
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#3So I was wondering if it could be that at the point of measurement it was moving very fast towards us. Napkin math says for photons to have 200 times more energy than expected it would need to be moving at 0.99995c. Huh.
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#4> These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tons, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza Five billion tons packed within a teaspoon volume!? Incredible.
When it comes to cosmic scales, it is literally unimaginable by the puny human mind. I don't know about others but I frankly can't really comprehend what does the mass of an entire mountain condensed into a single pebble mean.
And there are stars full of this stuff. And there are stars spinning so fast its magnetic waves would rip the iron out of my blood and destroy the physics that hold my atoms together just because I am standing a few billions miles away from it.
It is absolutely humbling and make it ridiculous to think that there were men ages ago who thought the universe was created solely for human and somehow we, the sacks of meat so fragile it bursts at every miniscule amount of agitation, were "made" as some special, supreme beings in the universe and all of creations. Hilarious and sad.
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#5> These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tons, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza Five billion tons packed within a teaspoon volume!? Incredible.
When it comes to cosmic scales, it is literally unimaginable by the puny human mind. I don't know about others but I frankly can't really comprehend what does the mass of an entire mountain condensed into a single pebble mean. And there are stars full of this stuff. And there are stars spinning so fast its magnetic waves would rip the iron out of my blood and destroy the physics that hold my atoms together just becau…
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Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#6[deleted]
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#7So I was wondering if it could be that at the point of measurement it was moving very fast towards us. Napkin math says for photons to have 200 times more energy than expected it would need to be moving at 0.99995c. Huh.
It's a photon. Photons always have speed = 1C.
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#8> These dead stars are almost entirely made up of neutrons and are incredibly dense: a teaspoon of their material has a mass of more than five billion tons, or about 900 times the mass of the Great Pyramid of Giza Five billion tons packed within a teaspoon volume!? Incredible.
When it comes to cosmic scales, it is literally unimaginable by the puny human mind. I don't know about others but I frankly can't really comprehend what does the mass of an entire mountain condensed into a single pebble mean. And there are stars full of this stuff. And there are stars spinning so fast its magnetic waves would rip the iron out of my blood and destroy the physics that hold my atoms together just becau…
I find all this really incredible as well. But at the same time I also find it really 'mindblowing' that I am able to think about why and how all of this stuff was made, and while thinking about it, there will always come a point where you have to at least 'think' about an creator. Not that I think it was made especially for us, but it's still very strange. Somewhere I read when you think about the universe it is like "The Universe thinking about itself.".
Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#9Re: Scientists discover the highest energy gamma-rays ever from a pulsar
#10So I was wondering if it could be that at the point of measurement it was moving very fast towards us. Napkin math says for photons to have 200 times more energy than expected it would need to be moving at 0.99995c. Huh.
It's a photon. Photons always have speed = 1C.
Technically no, photons don't always have a speed of 1C, as C is the speed of light _in a vacuum_. In more dense matter the speed of light will slow down.