The Science Thread here

There are a lot of intelligent, science-minded people here at ATS. I am the curious type, but by no means a brainiac. If you are like me, then you have a thousand little science questions that really aren't worth a thread on their own. Feel free to post them here and hopefully those science guys will answer them for us.

My first question is this:

All of the planets in our solar system orbit around the sun. Are there other systems out there where planets orbit a body that ISN'T a sun? I'm not talking about moons orbiting planets. I'm just curious to see if the center body of a system has to be a sun in order to prove it has more mass - mass that created so much pressure that it became a great ball of fire.

You almost answered your question by eliminating moons.
The definition of a Planet is something along the lines of a mass of considerable size orbiting a star of some form (it doesn't have to be on fire).

Not only do planets have moons, but even moons or asteroids can have their own moons.
So, a planet is no different to a moon in any other sense than that we've decided to define it to be a body around a star.

Originally posted by Nevertheless
You almost answered your question by eliminating moons.
The definition of a Planet is something along the lines of a mass of considerable size orbiting a star of some form (it doesn't have to be on fire).

Not only do planets have moons, but even moons or asteroids can have their own moons.
So, a planet is no different to a moon in any other sense than that we've decided to define it to be a body around a star.

But a star has to have an ENORMOUS amount of mass to hold all the planets in place (not like a silly little earth hugging a moon). I just wonder if the amount of pressure against the mass will always force the center body to burst into a sun.

reply to post by jiggerj


It depends on the scale you are looking for.

Our planet has satellites and the moon. Some meteors have moons and satellites as well.(There is a size cut-off between satellites and moons, I'm not sure what it is.)

We orbit the sun, the sun orbits the Super-massive Black hole in the center of the Milky Way. I'm not sure if galaxies orbit anything...

Question: Is it possible to have a solar system in which one of the planets revolves around the star, in the opposite direction as the other planets? Is it possible for a moon to orbit a planet in the opposite direction of the planets rotations?

Question: How is information in the brain stored? When I close my eyes and imagined things; a dog, a red dog, a house, a red house, a specific house from child hood, a girl, a specific girl; I see these things in my head (thats where I see everything technically). Physically what is making these images in my head? And what allows my imagination to be so malleable (dreams for example, large 'scape' that is constantly changing very quickly). So when I see a girl in a red dress in my childhood, and I remember that, how does that work? Is it like a film camera where the light reflecting off her goes into my eye and imprints some type of magnetic tape, for me to recall at will? (how does recalling memories at will work? How does my consciousness (how does conciousness work?) view at one moment, nothing, and then "recall" an address, or childhood memory? Is there just a huge data bank of magnetic tape images, and then when I use my imagination to create new images, there is some EM process of engraving memories? Or are our memories and thoughts and imagination digitally stored? not exact mini replicas of external reality, like our minds are a little theater and when we imagine we are putting on a linear play. So its more like how a computer works with electron gates, where we have mini areas that are the designated girls, and designated colors, and designated cities with street names and houses, and designated chronological history, and so when we recall a memory, we send analogous electrons (which in reality must be our consciousness, because we are aware of this process and in charge of it as it is occurring, searching for a memory, trying to fill in the blanks...and so we just go to one data area after the other trying to ad lib the pieces and try all the patterns to come up with that inkling of a conclusive memory that is on the tip of our inner tongues.

I know, sloppy, so maybe if anyone on the science forum knows anything about the brain, maybe they can generally discuss some of the points I brought up. (memory, consciousness/awareness internally of memory/imagination)

Question: What can space possibly be?

Question: What is EM radiation fundamentally?

Question: How does magnetic attraction work?

Question: When a radio wave is emitted from an emitter and the radio signal travels some distance to a receiver, how does the radio wave interact with the air molecules? Does it pass in-between them? Or is the radio signal constantly received and re emitted by each molecule it comes in contact with?

Originally posted by jiggerj
There are a lot of intelligent, science-minded people here at ATS. I am the curious type, but by no means a brainiac. If you are like me, then you have a thousand little science questions that really aren't worth a thread on their own. Feel free to post them here and hopefully those science guys will answer them for us.

My first question is this:

All of the planets in our solar system orbit around the sun. Are there other systems out there where planets orbit a body that ISN'T a sun? I'm not talking about moons orbiting planets. I'm just curious to see if the center body of a system has to be a sun in order to prove it has more mass - mass that created so much pressure that it became a great ball of fire.

There are, Brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, neutron stars, blackholes, magnatars, just giant rocky lumps bigger than 30 jupiters, there may well be places where many giant planets orbit in close proximity, and their combined gravity is equal to a solar mass, thus allowing an entire planetary system orbit them.

Just to make a very important point though, we here in our solar system have a secondary dwarf star with its own planetary system, it is jupiter.

If it were much larger we would have a binary star system, it provides its planet sized moons with more heat and light than they get from the sun, making it their primary star, and has many of the same behaviors of a small planetary system.

So jupiter could be counted honestly, as another small star system in our own system, just shows the way it is all connected, from even a smaller scale to a vastly larger one.

Just for reference to the size a "planet" can be. 99 percent of the solar systems mass is in the sun, of the 1 percent left over, jupiter is 99 percent of that. It is a very dominant factor in everything in the universe.

reply to post by jiggerj


1 could imagine a micro black hole holding celestial objects..

As well as an Artificial body designed with MASS adjustment tech for say repel of asteroid belts or other celestial debris in way of path etc.

Also a highly dense plasma like cloud may carry celestial bodies...

Interesting question... jiggerj

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by jiggerj

 

It depends on the scale you are looking for.

Our planet has satellites and the moon. Some meteors have moons and satellites as well.(There is a size cut-off between satellites and moons, I'm not sure what it is.)

We orbit the sun, the sun orbits the Super-massive Black hole in the center of the Milky Way. I'm not sure if galaxies orbit anything...

The size cut off is the amount of mass it takes to create enough gravity to hold the body in a spherical shape.

Technically, our moon could be counted as a proto planet if it wasnt orbiting us. You cant go much below the moon or pluto, before there isnt enough gravity to force the object to have a spherical shape, thats why alot of big meteors are potato shaped etc...... They are not massive enough to cause a sphere shape, so they are just lumped together.

It isnt just erosion that makes the mountains fall, they can only stack up so high under their own weights, before they break and fall back to the body planet, keeping from ever becoming a potato or other oblong shape.

Great question BTW!

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Question: What is EM radiation fundamentally?

At is simplest:
EM radiation is fundamentally radiant energy.
Different "forms" varying by their frequency and wavelength (keep in mind it also has particle-like properties, i.e. "dual behavior.") It is commonly thought of as a spectrum: at one end high frequency and short wavelengths are gamma rays, at the other end are low frequency, long wavelength radio waves. In between we have, among other things, the "visible spectrum" of light from 380nm to 780nm (which is just a very thin slice of the overall spectrum).

Science question.... Science is about things that are already proofs? Or could be proofs.. I guess a question that lacks understanding is appropriate here rather than question the unknown which would likely lead to conjectures.

Okay, I guess I do have a question..

Geothermal Energy.. Why isn't it used as a primary form of energy? Surely we all know the stats..

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by jiggerj

 

We orbit the sun, the sun orbits the Super-massive Black hole in the center of the Milky Way. I'm not sure if galaxies orbit anything...

It would follow. From a snail shell to a whirlpool, a hurricane and a galaxy, the principle is the same. If I were to extrapolate that upward in scale I would say that the Universe (or Universes) whirl around some central feature too.

We just haven't developed a wide enough angle lens to capture it yet.

A video of a whirlpool tells me that all matter moves in one direction around the center. Look at the boat caught up in it. I guess it could go against the "current" if its engine was powerful enough. But all other objects caught in its grasp "go with the flow". I wish I knew how to link them all together with a math formula. Somewhere in the spiral of a shell, whirlpool, hurricane and galaxy there is a "Grand Unified Connection".

Beats me.

reply to post by ImaFungi

Question: When a radio wave is emitted from an emitter and the radio signal travels some distance to a receiver, how does the radio wave interact with the air molecules? Does it pass in-between them? Or is the radio signal constantly received and re emitted by each molecule it comes in contact with?

It goes right thru them. Molecules and Atoms are "huge" compared to the electrons or photons that make up a "radio signal", for instance.

I had a cool science teacher when I was kid. He brought a bb gun, a tennis ball and some string to class one day.

We all sat on the floor of the room in a ring. One student spun the tennis ball around his head on a 10 foot long piece of string. The student spinning the string was the "nucleus" of the atom, the tennis ball was an electron. Then he had one student close his eyes and try to hit the tennis ball with the bb gun while lying on the floor under the spinning tennis ball. Without going into safety issues it became clear to us how "big" the small spaces between atoms are and the unlikeliness of collisions.

The radio signal you asked about would be the BB traveling from the transmitter to the antenna. It just literally flies right through molecules and atoms as though they aren't even there.

Originally posted by intrptr

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by jiggerj

 

We orbit the sun, the sun orbits the Super-massive Black hole in the center of the Milky Way. I'm not sure if galaxies orbit anything...

It would follow. From a snail shell to a whirlpool, a hurricane and a galaxy, the principle is the same. If I were to extrapolate that upward in scale I would say that the Universe (or Universes) whirl around some central feature too.

We just haven't developed a wide enough angle lens to capture it yet.

A video of a whirlpool tells me that all matter moves in one direction around the center. Look at the boat caught up in it. I guess it could go against the "current" if its engine was powerful enough. But all other objects caught in its grasp "go with the flow". I wish I knew how to link them all together with a math formula. Somewhere in the spiral of a shell, whirlpool, hurricane and galaxy there is a "Grand Unified Connection".

Beats me.

this is not actually true at all, as a whirlpool, or hurricane, is all matter being swept in a circle, well spiral anyhow.

Space is not full of matter like a whirlpool, in a whirlpool it takes great effort to go in the opposing direction as the flow of liquid, as liquid is thick, and quite heavy.

We have satellites that orbit counter to our rotation already, and we even have a planet that spins different from all the others. Uranus spins on its side, with its poles east and west not north and south like ours, but even ours are off axis, by 23 degrees. from the solar plane.

So yes, planets can orbit counter to the rotation of the others, and a moon can orbit counter to the planets rotation.

Forgive me if I am incorrect with my recollection. This is something I have never been able to grasp.

Why is it theorized that if we were able to travel close to the speed of light our mass would increase incrementally as we approach that speed?

Can you explain how that happens and why?

reply to post by jiggerj

Not sure your question. How small does a space body have to be to have an object caught in its gravity well? Heres one we know about. Its an asteroid in our solar system with a tiny moonlet.

Originally posted by Grimpachi
Forgive me if I am incorrect with my recollection. This is something I have never been able to grasp.

Why is it theorized that if we were able to travel close to the speed of light our mass would increase incrementally as we approach that speed?

Can you explain how that happens and why?

www.snotr.com...

If someone can post the image notice how in the front where there is most speed the AREA around the Projectile / Or craft example is smaller... Perhaps this is where its theorized the faster a craft goes near LS it gains mass maybe the mass gained evaluation is actually time space shrinking around projectile / craft. Good question So eject beam to expand space in front and move more beam faster go more energy needed more beam faster go as space in path is expanded...

my 3 cents

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Question: When a radio wave is emitted from an emitter and the radio signal travels some distance to a receiver, how does the radio wave interact with the air molecules? Does it pass in-between them? Or is the radio signal constantly received and re emitted by each molecule it comes in contact with?

It goes right thru them. Molecules and Atoms are "huge" compared to the electrons or photons that make up a "radio signal", for instance.

I had a cool science teacher when I was kid. He brought a bb gun, a tennis ball and some string to class one day.

We all sat on the floor of the room in a ring. One student spun the tennis ball around his head on a 10 foot long piece of string. The student spinning the string was the "nucleus" of the atom, the tennis ball was an electron. Then he had one student close his eyes and try to hit the tennis ball with the bb gun while lying on the floor under the spinning tennis ball. Without going into safety issues it became clear to us how "big" the small spaces between atoms are and the unlikeliness of collisions.

The radio signal you asked about would be the BB traveling from the transmitter to the antenna. It just literally flies right through molecules and atoms as though they aren't even there.

Thanks for the response, it was very good. But arent there air molecules everywhere in the atmosphere, there is no space between them is there? and if there is, what is that space? that is the space you are saying photons travel? Because the atmosphere is full of atoms/molecules, and full of radio waves, I really dont get how with all these atoms constantly moving and taking up (in my mind all space, unless you can tell me what is the space that atoms dont take up), how the radio waves just flow on by.

reply to post by inverslyproportional

Space is not full of matter like a whirlpool,

Yes it is. its filled with gravity (whatever that is).

in a whirlpool it takes great effort to go in the opposing direction as the flow of liquid, as liquid is thick, and quite heavy.

So is the influence of gravity.

We have satellites that orbit counter to our rotation already, and we even have a planet that spins different from all the others.

Because chemical rockets pushed them into "opposite orbits". I think thats IMAFUNGI's question. Orbit "direction", not "spin" direction or axis of natural space bodies.

Originally posted by FatherStacks

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Question: What is EM radiation fundamentally?

At is simplest:
EM radiation is fundamentally radiant energy.
Different "forms" varying by their frequency and wavelength (keep in mind it also has particle-like properties, i.e. "dual behavior.") It is commonly thought of as a spectrum: at one end high frequency and short wavelengths are gamma rays, at the other end are low frequency, long wavelength radio waves. In between we have, among other things, the "visible spectrum" of light from 380nm to 780nm (which is just a very thin slice of the overall spectrum).

How can it have particle like qualities? What are photons before they become photons, where do they come from?

If we had unimaginably perfect measuring equipment, so that we could 'see/view' every plancks length of the universe, and we paused all motion of the universe, and attempted to examine different manifestations of EM radiation, how would it appear?