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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)

#241

Post by zirgs »

bradley13 wrote: post #22

I've seen models like this before. We live in a universe with many, many orders of magnitude. In both directions. Living creatures to small to see, space too big to comprehend. Mining asteroids for space resources sounds great, right up until you consider the distances involved. Living on Mars - yes, we really should - but you sure aren't going to support a colony long-term from anywhere but local resources.

We are pumping oil that's located under the seabed. It would have seemed completely insane in the 19th century when all oil was easily accessible. Asteroid mining might be feasible in a few decades. If it really gets going - it could make gold as cheap as aluminium is today.

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

#242

Post by Digit-Al »

jadbox wrote: post #99

Unrelated, but the Elon dream of getting a human colony on Mars seems beyond imagination. Ignoring safety of such a long travel, the radiation issue of Mar's surface, and the massive infrastructure to have a self-sustainable biosphere (also somehow protected from radiation) to recycle enough oxygen, we still have to deal with the immense number of failures that could happen with no way to send help. Like, building a…

If you're really interested in a deep dive on this subject then I really recommend "A City On Mars" by Zach and Kelly Weinersmith (of SMBC). It goes very deep into things like - can you have babies successfully in space?

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

#243

Post by cheschire »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #155
amiga386 wrote: post #60

I love how simple the HTML/CSS is. Absolute positioning with really large left: values. #saturn { position: absolute; left: 412397px; height: 34px; width: 65px; fill: #ffa043; }

We have come full circle. I'd imagine that px uses a surprising amount of abstraction.

Anyone that has tried to absolutely position shapes on an Excel spreadsheet via code would probably agree.

Who the hell decided to make EMU’s??

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

#244

Post by tombrandis »

smeeger wrote: post #163

why have we not shot a probe toward the nearest foreign star?

There was a plan in ~2016 backed by Zuckerberg, Hawking and some entrepreneur but it didn't really get anywhere (in a literal sense). Research for it stopped in 2022 because of a "lack of funding".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/mark-zuckerber...

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

#245

Post by morsch »

mgraczyk wrote: post #240
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in comparison to the distances that exist This leaves out the time component. Who's to say that a year is long? A galaxy a million light years away takes a million years to reach... and maybe that's a short amount of time, to the right observer.

Light could only go to Andromeda and back 1000 times before the sun burns out. That's not very many times IMO. On the scale of galaxies, light is slow relative to any timescale relevant to large objects.

Carrying the metaphor further, that's closer than America was to Europe in the 18th century.

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

aledalgrande wrote: post #190
ryandrake wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't need a sudden jump. If you had a rocket that accelerated at a pleasant 1G forever, you could reach and stop at the center of the milky way in about 20 (your time) years, and you could reach and stop at the Andromeda galaxy in about 28 years. Play around with some of the online space travel relativity calculators--it's wild! Of course building and fueling such a rocket is what's totally out of reach.

Is there drag in space? I.e. would you need increasing energy to accelerate at a constant rate as the speed goes up?

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by wltr »

zhengyi13 wrote: post #142
pc86 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And then it’s asking for Internet Explorer joke then, as an explorer something, not I’m not able to come up with it either.

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

#249

Post by darkwater »

mgraczyk wrote: post #240
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in comparison to the distances that exist This leaves out the time component. Who's to say that a year is long? A galaxy a million light years away takes a million years to reach... and maybe that's a short amount of time, to the right observer.

Light could only go to Andromeda and back 1000 times before the sun burns out. That's not very many times IMO. On the scale of galaxies, light is slow relative to any timescale relevant to large objects.

How many times can you go from Lisbon to Beijing and back by car in your lifetime?

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

#250

Post by mgraczyk »

darkwater wrote: post #249
mgraczyk wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Light could only go to Andromeda and back 1000 times before the sun burns out. That's not very many times IMO. On the scale of galaxies, light is slow relative to any timescale relevant to large objects.

How many times can you go from Lisbon to Beijing and back by car in your lifetime?

Not many, because cars are slow
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