31–40 of 196 posts
The whole things seems like such a massive living system that I cannot help guessing that what we think of as universe is just a somewhat large single creature.
The whole things seems like such a massive living system that I cannot help guessing that what we think of as universe is just a somewhat large single creature.
This reminds me of this quote from Jill Tarter of SETI, specifically the last sentence: “Might it be the discovery of a distant civilization and our common cosmic origins that finally drives home the message of the bond among all humans? Whether we’re born in San Francisco or Sudan or close to the heart of the Milky Way Galaxy, we are the products of a billion-year lineage of wandering stardust. We, all of us, are wh…
> When the Vera Rubin survey telescope goes online, it’s expected to see hundreds of thousands of supernovae per year by itself.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s wrong with it taking a billion of our years to tick? Just because we, smaller than microscopic beings compared to the size of the larger structures we observe, find it to be a vastly long time, doesn’t mean that it’s a long time for something the size of the observable universe. For a single bacteria cell, our timeframes must seem immense too. I’m not saying it’s particularly likely, but it’s a trap to think t…
The problem with zooming out is that the speed of light sets a specific size/time scale so the more zoomed out you get, the more disconnected the big picture is. The observable universe is a mere 93 billion light-years across, so there's a limit on how far it makes sense to talk about zooming out. Also, with the universe expanding, the observable size will reduce over a long time period. The scales involved are vastl…
As a non-astronomer, that number still always boggles my mind.
> Also, with the universe expanding, the observable size will reduce over a long time period.
Also boggles my mind. Also makes me think of doctor who when the stars start disappearing. I need to rewatch that...
We're dealing with the sum total of everything, if the true nature of things is that there are a finite number of supernovas I'd be surprised. The real shock is how small the number of supernovas is and how young everything seems to be in the known universe (the age of the observed universe is estimated at maybe double digit billion years). These are tiny numbers given that we're quite possibly dealing with infinity…
A century being the amount of time it takes earth, one specific planet to orbit its star 100 times? What about all the other planets and stars?
I couldn't spot the supernova and there's no answer to where it is. :'(
If I got the math right, then about 1 in every 32,000 stars in the universe goes supernova each year. That's scary. But I think I'm getting the math very wrong. edit: I guess my error might be related to confusing a probability factor with the number of incidents in a period. edit: The right answer is probably up to 1 in every 10bn stars go supernovae in the universe each year (or 1 in 10bn die and a fraction are sup…
Numbers are huge. Even tiny ratios mean something like 10-100 stars go supernova every single second somewhere in the universe.
Sounds a lot? Only about 1 star per galaxy goes supernova per century. A lot of galaxies.
Mindblowing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fun to think that at some point it will be actually vast and completely dark
https://youtu.be/uD4izuDMUQA?si=LcVxE3w-ohGqZAr7 If you need some existential dread. It's a hypothetical video to portray the rest of the universe, the time speed moving forward doubles every 5 seconds - and it's 29 minutes long...
If I got the math right, then about 1 in every 32,000 stars in the universe goes supernova each year. That's scary. But I think I'm getting the math very wrong. edit: I guess my error might be related to confusing a probability factor with the number of incidents in a period. edit: The right answer is probably up to 1 in every 10bn stars go supernovae in the universe each year (or 1 in 10bn die and a fraction are sup…
> If got the math right, then about 1 in every 32,000 stars in the universe goes supernova each year Can’t be right, can it? It would make the Sun (over 4 billion years old) an enormous outlier. It also would mean stars, on average, do not get very old. Over 10% of the stars that the ancient Greeks saw in the sky would have to have gone supernova since then.
Yes. That fact that I'm thinking made me think I was certainly wrong