First off, dont look at the outer wilds discussion on here, just play the game. Second - they didnt say how many letters we need to encode all of the observable supernova in a given year! So 100 billion galaxies, 1 per year per galaxy, we have around 1 billion to encode. Sorry two edits this moring, first one was right. due to math without coffee. 1e9/26^6 is about 3, 1e9/26^7 is less than one. So we might see 'SN2050aaaaaah'!
How many supernova explode every year?
81–90 of 196 posts
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#82Hmm… So that's cool, but now I'm thinking: the distant galaxies are redshifted and time-dilated in equal proportion, and also more densly packed because the universe was smaller in the past, so I expect the actual rate of supernovas to be significantly smaller than simply multiplying 1/century/galaxy by 1e11 galaxies. Edit: also I don't know if rate of supernovas changes over history thanks to different steller envir…
I would imagine the supernova rate to be higher in the early universe, as we've already passed peak stellar formation rates and the heavier (and shorter lived) stars were more likely to be formed earlier when the average density of the universe was higher.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is no reason to expect any particular number of universes. We've observed exactly one, this one, which had to exist or else we wouldn't be here to observe that it existed. Our universe is finite, so although it is unbounded (lacks edges) there aren't an infinite number of anything in it, galaxies, stars, M&Ms, grains of sand, atoms of hydrogen all finite.
Has that really been established? The observable universe is finite, yes, but I wouldn't think that automatically implied that the universe as a whole is.
Simply put we can't know and we can never know if the universe is flat. Now, if the universe has a curvature then we could use that as a baseline for the size of the universe, but as of so far we've not detected one.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does it need fixing?
Since I'd like to live forever, then yes.
>Since I'd like to live forever, then yes.
Please read this article first before damning yourself to an unimaginable hell.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#85Spoiler alert:
> THIRTY SUPERNOVAE PER SECOND, over the entire observable Universe.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#86If 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…
A star "lasts" about 10 billion years, so you'd expect about 1 in 10 billion stars to 'die' each year, but only a tiny proportion (the very largest) go supernova. 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.
The lifespan of stars varies a lot by type and size, with largest stars having a very short life-span of maybe a few dozen million of years and small ones up to dozens of billions of years. I'm not sure what the average is.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe they will have to transition from Base 26 counting to Base 64!
It's in the article. SN2067aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa vs SN2067aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. Apparently astronomers find base26 very straightforward and reasonable!
That is unfortunate. With only two prime factors, one of which being 13, base 26 is even worse than base 10, and it doesn't even have anatomical coincidence to recommend it. Much better to use base 36 -- we have a ready made character set for it by simply adding the digits to the 26 alphabetic characters. This gives us many more integer prime factors. Not as good as base 60, but better than base 26 and finger numbers.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Star Wars takes place entirely within one galaxy, and the number of supernova per galaxy is something like 1 per century, so, nah, Han was just bullshitting to stall for time while his busted-ass computer cobbled together numbers.
Not only that, it happened a long long time ago. I'm no astronomer; would that be more or less supernovae?
Indeed. They didn't say it happened an "int" time ago. They didn't even say a "long" time ago. They said a "long long" time. I'd have to pull up a copy of the C standard to be sure, but even if the units of "time" are plank times, I suspect the implications could easily be that the story occurs before the big bang.
Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#89Re: How many supernova explode every year?
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fun to think that at some point it will be actually vast and completely dark
We have a couple trillion years to figure out a way to fix that.
Or to acquire the wisdom to accept it. We certainly are far too young to have a perspective to say which course of action is better -- or indeed to define what "better" means.