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If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

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Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#141

Post by nilamo »

davidee wrote: post #120
johnnyjeans wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is light slow? Or is the human perception of time just scaled down as a result of our rapid metabolism and infinitesimality? People historically mistake plants for being inanimate things with no reactivity, that they are far more simple and stupid than they truly are. Outside of a few exotic examples, plants simply operate on a wider timescale that's basically imperceptible without careful and particular observation.…

Thanks for this. In addition to the insight, it reminded me to water a plant at a desk I no longer use. The plant's been with me through quite a bit and I have been neglecting it recently as I no longer see it regularly.

Move your plant friend to your new desk?

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#142

Post by zhengyi13 »

pc86 wrote: post #83
neuroelectron wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Caused Brave in iOS to crash. I have a newer iPad mini with 12GB ram too. But luckily It didn't crash until I tried to close the tab.

This seems like a browser issue more than anything else. Yes it's "weird" to have millions of pixels horizontally on a page that is only a few thousand pixels tall, but it seems like an absolutely reasonable edge case that the browser should support.

I feel there's a joke here about "edge" cases from scrolling ridiculously long horizontal distances, but I'm not smart enough to make it.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#144

Post by Scarblac »

eslaught wrote: post #131
raxxorraxor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few mi…

One thing I've always wondered is what fraction of c is actually realistically achievable with current technologies? (Maybe with scenarios for manned/unmanned spacecraft.) Like are we at 0.1% or 0.01% or more orders of magnitude off?

According to the first Google hit, https://scitechdaily.com/nasas-parker-solar-probe-the-fastes... , the fastest we've made so far went 430k mph (falling towards the sun), or about 0.064% of c. Good guess.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#145

Post by jandrese »

Andrex wrote: post #50
NKosmatos wrote: post #46

We’re never going to leave this planet/solar system if we don’t discover FTL (Faster Than Light) travel. Pretty scary if you think about how ridiculously empty is space.

We can leave it pretty easily. :p Only took Voyager 1 about 40 years. If ~1.0C is the fastest man can travel, that's still pretty good. Alpha Centauri is in reach (less than five light-years).

Alpha Centauri is a triple star system with no habitable planets. Why in the hell would you go there? Sending people to another solar system is so resource intensive that assuming you can convert the entirety of Jupiter into some kind of orders of magnitude more efficient exotic rocket fuel you might have enough resources for a small handful of expeditions, so you really need to make them count.

Maybe it would make sense if you could convert the mass of Proxima Centauri into rocket fuel to fund more expeditions? That seems like a fairly long term plan though.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#146

Post by Kuyawa »

Kuyawa wrote: post #137
j_m_b wrote: post #92

One of my favorite visualizations of the scale of the solar system is from Stephen Hawking's Genius. https://mass.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/hawking_genius_ep... It's a hands-on, practical example of how far things are away that we can easily visualize. I highly recommend the rest of the series as well. It's one of the best science shows ever produced. It shows the practical path of scientific discovery. You can w…

I've always used this aprox dimensions: Sun diam 1,400,000 km Eth diam 13,000 km Sun dist 150,000,000 km Mon diam 3,500 km Mon dist 300,000 km Lets divide it all by 1M. So if the sun is 1.4m in diameter, it would be located 150m from earth which would be 13mm in diameter and the moon would be 3.5mm located 0.3m from earth Simply put, imagine a yellow beach ball the size of a washing machine located a block and a half…

Now, using the basketball 24cm (earth) and tennis ball 6.5cm (moon) comparison, they would be separated by 7m in your living room and the sun would be 13m tall (a cherry tree) located at 3km from your house

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#147

Post by nilamo »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #74
munksbeer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Light is incredibly slow, and everything seems out of reach. Yes, agreed. I find it a little depressing. An unimaginably huge universe, tantalisingly there, but completely out of reach.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few mi…

> Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing...

A starship capable of such a journey is surely large enough to bring all your friends and family along, colony-ship style.

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#149

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

Reubachi wrote: post #65
sheepscreek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not with light speed travel. At even 1% the speed of light, the travel time diminishes significantly: - Titan, Io and Ganymede are only 2.5 days away - Pluto is about 23 days Edit: Even at such speeds, we still can’t visit a nearby star system in a reasonable time-frame. Oh well.

As time passes, the universe is expanding infinitely in every direction from every point. Even if we could travel at 1 percent the speed of light, the "destination" would be inflating away from us at much greater relatavistic speed. To your point, this is less an issue with solar or extra solar objects.

Doesn't this depend on the initial distance to the destination? I'm thinking you have to be going ~140M light-years for cosmic expansion to exceed 1%c, and Proxima Centauri is only ~4 light-years away

Re: If the moon were only 1 pixel: A tediously accurate solar system model (2014)

#150

Post by anon_cow1111 »

eslaught wrote: post #131
raxxorraxor wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not out of reach if you get very close to light speed. Time would advance very slowly for you, so counterintuitively it is possible to travel 5000ly in your life time. Although for everyone else at least 5000 years will pass, so better say goodbye to family and friend. Hm, not sure if that is really less depressing... Also light isn't slow. A photon instantly travels to the end of time and yet it still takes a few mi…

One thing I've always wondered is what fraction of c is actually realistically achievable with current technologies? (Maybe with scenarios for manned/unmanned spacecraft.) Like are we at 0.1% or 0.01% or more orders of magnitude off?

We have a number! Around 0.1c maximum and unsurprisingly it involves using nuclear bombs to push yourself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propuls...

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