The Science Thread here

Originally posted by ImaFungi

Originally posted by fuserleer
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Its just space, it isn't empty though.

You will find in there, electrons and photons whizzing by and "matter/anti-matter" pairs that spontaneously appear there annihilate each other giving off gamma rays. Also if they exist will be gravitons.

you cant say its just space, without defining what just space is. Im wondering where there is no electrons, photons, matter/anti matter etc. what is there. what is space???

My guess is that there is something there, but we haven't become technologically advanced enough to detect it yet. I mean, there HAS to be something there, wouldn't you think? If we can see the water that boats float on, then some day we'll have to see what all the galaxies are floating on.

Question: Just like when a sinking object finds it bouyancy level in the ocean, is our universe floating in that dark energy? Or, are we constantly falling in a great void?

reply to post by jiggerj


I like this thread.
Firstly mass and weight are not the same. Mass is more like having inertia. Inertia is property of any object to stay at rest or in motion. The faster an object goes the more inertia it has (and the ability to resist against it).

The object does not grow more atoms, it increases mass or inertia. More energy is needed to increase velocity of the object (the limit in our known universe is the constant c). Think of it as the resistance to acceleration.

With the density of our galactic centre, how is it possible to see the other side?

Are the images I see presented a result of lensing, or are they extrapolated from what we can see in other galaxies?

Originally posted by an0nThinker
reply to post by jiggerj

 

I like this thread.
Firstly mass and weight are not the same. Mass is more like having inertia. Inertia is property of any object to stay at rest or in motion. The faster an object goes the more inertia it has (and the ability to resist against it).

The object does not grow more atoms, it increases mass or inertia. More energy is needed to increase velocity of the object (the limit in our known universe is the constant c). Think of it as the resistance to acceleration.

Wow! It is amazing how we can get and live with a wrong idea. And I HATE that! I'm really going to have to work to readjust my thinking on Mass. Thanks for info.

reply to post by jiggerj


Question: If the earth's gravity is powerful enough to keep the moon in orbit, how come it isn't powerful enough to bring all of our own tiny pieces of space debris raining down on our atmosphere? How can those little pieces maintain just the right speed to stay in orbit?

reply to post by inverslyproportional

An outside planet or moon, can be captured and orbit in the opposing direction, just fine.

Yep. ?

reply to post by jiggerj

Question: If the earth's gravity is powerful enough to keep the moon in orbit, how come it isn't powerful enough to bring all of our own tiny pieces of space debris raining down on our atmosphere? How can those little pieces maintain just the right speed to stay in orbit?

There is no "right speed". The altitude of an object in orbit is determined by it's angular velocity (how fast it's going relative to the planet). If the object isn't going fast enough it will end up in the atmosphere. If it's going "too fast" it will move to a higher orbit (at which point it will slow down, but that's where it starts getting tricky so I'll just leave it with that).

Think of it as falling around the Earth. It's like falling toward Earth, but missing.

reply to post by jiggerj


Spin a ball around you head on a string. The string (gravity) keeps the ball from "flying off". The forward inertia of the ball "tugging" against the string (gravity) is what keeps it from falling to the ground. Its a balance between the two. They design orbiting satellites within this balance.

In space vacuum there is no atmosphere to slow the ball down. But orbits still "decay", just slower because near frictionless environ of space.

ETA: Right, Phage?

Originally posted by jiggerj
Aw, that's nice, but don't thank me yet. I STILL don't get how an increase in energy means the same thing as an increase in mass. If I have a dead car battery and recharge it so that it is full of energy, the battery doesn't get bigger (does it?). When I hear that an object takes on mass nearer the speed of light, what I imagine is that the object is somehow growing more atoms. If this isn't the case, then why call it mass if it's just taking on more energy?

The problem is with the terms used really.

E=mc^2 is the equation that shows that mass / matter is energy. Mass is basically a measure of the energy content of matter.

Accelerating matter increases its energy, therefore you could say its mass has increased too, even though the amount of matter hasn't changed.

m = m0 / SQRT( 1 - v^2 / c^2 ) shows the relationship and the 'different' kinds of mass.

m is the Relativistic Mass
m0 is the Invariant Mass, or the amount of matter. This is sometimes called Proper Mass
v = the velocity of the mass
c = the speed of light

When it is said that the mass increases, it is really the Relativistic Mass that increases. The Invariant Mass, or amount of matter, doesn't change.

Hello all, Great thread so far!
Would it be possible to use Thermo Electrical Generators on a ship during reentry? And would something like this be able to address energy issues for space flights that require a ton of it? assuming we can travel at a speed that crates enough heat for the exchange.. Like many I to have an interest in these subjects but find easier to understand through unconventional means. Thanks
Thermo Electrical Generators

Originally posted by Arbitrageur

4) According to thermodynamics we can never have any zero point energy or create more energy then we put into something. So we can never have perpetual motion. Yet when a satellite tumbles it keeps tumbling almost indefinitely until another force acts on it in the opposite direction, or over a long time the slight amount of friction in space stops it.
With the above in mind, shouldn't it be possible to make a simple generator whose armature spins indefinitely within a coil as long as it's in the same type of nearly frictionless environment?

We have generators that use something along these lines if you want to stretch a point...they generate energy from ocean tides. That's possible. And you can extract energy from orbits and rotational motions like that but of course when you do, the orbit decays or the rotation slows down according to how much energy you extract. Since the Earth is so big, using tidal power won't slow it down that much.

edit on 8-6-2013 by Arbitrageur because: clarification extra DIV

Originally posted by ImaFungi
Question: How is information in the brain stored?

I can give a shot but the brain is one of the most complex organs in the human body so exact information on just how it does what it does is subject to change as more is learned about it. Overall, memory is heavily suspected as being a function of the hippocampus within the brain. The hippocampus is this little worm like thing that is part of the cerebral cortex deep in the middle lower portion of the brain. How it was learned that the hippocampus has anything to do with memory was because a long time ago, a doctor trying to help a young man with severe seizures, removed his hippocampus. It did correct the young man's seizures but it also made it so that he could no longer create long term memory although he still maintained childhood memories. Even more interesting though is that even with damage or removal of the hippocampus, a person can still learn to do things so the hippocampus, while it affects memory formation and recollection (ie remembering a girl walking down the street that day), it doesn't affect what is called procedural memory. So, such a person wouldn't remember learning how to play the piano after their accident but they'd know how to play the piano.

Memory also doesn't seem to be utterly dependent on the hippocampus or stored within it. If that was the case then the patient above would have lost all of his memories. Studies have found that older memories are actually stored in the frontal lobe so it's probable that the hippocampus facilitates the formation of memory and recollection for newer memories. As a memory grows in age, it seems to no longer require the hippocampus for recollection. Its existence within the frontal lobe is pretty interesting because the function of that part of the brain is basically to assist decision making--understanding consequences for actions, knowing what's right or wrong or even what's the best course of action--all of those decisions are generally based on experience. Experience comes from memory.

Overall, there's a whole slew of different types of memories--emotional, visual, aural, olfactory and so on. Each one of these things get processed in their corresponding parts of the brain at the time of the occurrence but the memory that gets stored in the frontal lobe can be basically tagged with these smells, sounds, and so on. That's why a specific scent may trigger up a recollection of grandma baking cookies in the oven. Thing is, these associations may degrade over time so you may not remember what it was your grandma said but you'll remember the smell and the sight of her baking cookies. Or the song that was playing when you met your love. In a lot of ways, it is like EM storage as you suggest and the data that is encoded in the brain has all sorts of tags that basically, when you recall it, initiate responses from the various parts of the brain so that you "see" it, maybe smell it or hear the song that was on the radio in a dim way. Each one of these senses is actually processed in the brain at the time of the experience and so it's encoded and can be replayed if the memory is triggered with some degradation. Hope that answers your question.

Originally posted by jiggerj
reply to post by inverslyproportional

 

I love the way you explain things without sounding arrogant. Good job!

Sadly, too many people with increased knowledge become too full of themselves, leaving their communication skills lacking. If I didn't know better I'd swear you are the loveable physicist many people are accusing of demoting Pluto from planet to planetoid.

Now, let me comment on this part of your reply:

A 1 LBS object dropped 1 foot will do x damage, same object but accelerated to 100 times the speed as before, it will do more than 100 times the damage, as the energy it takes to accelerate an object increases exponentially with speed, the faster it goes, the more energy it takes to make it go faster, the more inertia it has, the greater the energy it imparts on an object it strikes.

This sounds like your still talking about energy and not mass, which could mean that I don't understand what mass is. When I hear that objects take on mass the nearer they get to the speed of light, I imagine those objects getting larger. To me, your 1 LBS. object could take on more atoms and become the size of a planet while traveling near the speed of light. Is this idea of taking on mass incorrect?

Just got home from work, time to play in the science forums again, SWEET!!!!!!

I love this stuff, science is so danged cool.

Nice question, i will see if I can make easier to understand.

The object is not gaining atoms, thus not growing in size at all, just energy, so the 1LBS object will be say 1 inch by inch, while at rest.

We accelerate it to half of the speed of light, it is still 1 inch by 1 inch, just imparted with alot more energy, in the form of inertia, or kinetic energy.

This one inch by 1 inch object going at this speed will hit the ground with the same force as a mountain, a really BIG mountain, dropped from great height.

Now say it took, 1 unit of energy to accelerate it to half the speed of light, it would take hundreds of units to get it to go 80 percent the speed of light, tens of thousands to get it to 90 percent the speed of light, and millions or billions to get it to 99 percent the speed of light, the get that last little 1 percent, to accelerate it to the speed of light, it would require more energy than there is in the entire universe combined.

The above is not to correct scale, sorry but I am too tired to look it up and do the math right now, but it is a pretty good analogy as to the force multiplier that relativistic speed adds.

Now at 99 pecent the speed of light, every single unit of energy you put in does exceedingly less work, as the object is now gaining very great amounts of mass relative to the amount of speed it picks up, one would have to add trillions of units to even see any increase at all at 99.999 percent the speed of light, and this is with the amount of energy needed to go half the speed of light being only 1 unit of energy, which tells you how high the 1 unit is worth.

If a single marble, not even a great masher, just a regular little one, was going at 99.99999 percent the speed of light and struck the earth, it would be an extinction level event, it may even sterilize the planet, or even destroy it utterly.

As I mentioned before, one cannot measure the weight of the object at this speed, as even if you had it in a space ship going this speed with a perfect scale, the scale would also be going the same speed, thus also have a higher energy state, so it would only weight 1LBS relative to the machine measuring it.

Instead we measure it via kinetic or impact energy, not weight, as there is no way to weigh it honestly.

So a 1ounce object going X speed would hit with the same force as a mountain travelling at Y speed.

So the weight isnt the measure used, it is the energy of the object at these speeds.

So yes the 1LBS object could ave the mass energy of say a planet like in your example, but it would remain the original size, only its energy would be vastly increased.

Even a proton, would have the mass energy of the Sun itself at a high enough speed, though it would remain tiny, it would just be able to go right through the earth and destroy it without blinking.


Which always made me question, if i accelerated a mass to high enough speed, would it become a blackhole.

I dont know the answer to this, I would like someone to tell me the answer, though I have never even heard, or read about it being discussed. Just boggles the mind, the universe, it is a crazy awesome place to play and learn, the more you learn, the more you realize you know nothing, every answer just gives even more questions, that you didnt even know could be asked.

I like the way you think jigger, you make me think, you ask all the right questions in your science threads. you question everything in a most astounding way.

Originally posted by jiggerj
reply to post by Grimpachi

 

BTW this is now officially my favorite forum I would like to thank jiggerj as well

Aw, that's nice, but don't thank me yet. I STILL don't get how an increase in energy means the same thing as an increase in mass. If I have a dead car battery and recharge it so that it is full of energy, the battery doesn't get bigger (does it?). When I hear that an object takes on mass nearer the speed of light, what I imagine is that the object is somehow growing more atoms. If this isn't the case, then why call it mass if it's just taking on more energy?

Mass doesnt equal size, as a 1 LBS lead weight, is much smaller than a 1LBS cotton ball.

Mass and size have nothing to do with eachother, a blackhole's singularity is only a planck length, so small it doesnt even technically exist, yet it weighs more than several of our sun, for just a small one.

Quite interesting thought really, how can somthing so small weigh sooo much? Or a planet the size of saturn be so light? If you dropped it in a giant ocean it would float quite well, think about that for a few minutes, that enormous gas giant can float on water if you could find an ocean big enough to drop it in.

Originally posted by jiggerj

Originally posted by ImaFungi

Originally posted by fuserleer
reply to post by ImaFungi

 

Its just space, it isn't empty though.

You will find in there, electrons and photons whizzing by and "matter/anti-matter" pairs that spontaneously appear there annihilate each other giving off gamma rays. Also if they exist will be gravitons.

you cant say its just space, without defining what just space is. Im wondering where there is no electrons, photons, matter/anti matter etc. what is there. what is space???

My guess is that there is something there, but we haven't become technologically advanced enough to detect it yet. I mean, there HAS to be something there, wouldn't you think? If we can see the water that boats float on, then some day we'll have to see what all the galaxies are floating on.

Question: Just like when a sinking object finds it bouyancy level in the ocean, is our universe floating in that dark energy? Or, are we constantly falling in a great void?

edit on 6/8/2013 by jiggerj because: (no reason given)

Absolutely great question!!!!!! Just amazing really!!!!!

Wish I had an answer, sadly I have nothing.

Originally posted by GBP/JPY
Science question after this biology question.....what good do yellow jacket wasps serve? I don't guess they'd eat skeeters, would they......

Kind of a gross question...you'll see. Adults don't but their larvae might. Adult yellow jackets eat sugary stuff like sap but they are hunters in the bug world. While they don't eat meat themselves, they'll chew it up and spit it back out for the larvae to eat. The larvae will eat this thoroughly masticated meat and, in turn, secrete a sugar...which the adults will eat. lol

As a hunter, they would play a role in population control within an ecosystem and will go after what we consider pests. Kind of sad really because we consider them pests, too. They don't play a major role in pollination though some types of orchids are specifically shaped and colored as to dupe both wasps and bees to mate with them and increase the chance of pollination (though not by the wasp directly lol--that's impossible).

Cool wasp/orchid porn:

Originally posted by intrptr
reply to post by jiggerj

 

Spin a ball around you head on a string. The string (gravity) keeps the ball from "flying off". The forward inertia of the ball "tugging" against the string (gravity) is what keeps it from falling to the ground. Its a balance between the two. They design orbiting satellites within this balance.

In space vacuum there is no atmosphere to slow the ball down. But orbits still "decay", just slower because near frictionless environ of space.

ETA: Right, Phage?

edit on 9-6-2013 by intrptr because: (no reason given)

I am not Phage, but I will confirm your reply, it is accurate.

Though the orbital decay is caused as you stated by "near" frictionless environment of space. there are just stray atoms and debis everywhere, so the object, be it craft or satellite, loses energy every time it impacts one of these, so its orbit decays over time.

Though you said it so much better than I did, quite well done!!!

Originally posted by broadbandit
With the density of our galactic centre, how is it possible to see the other side?

It's not. We can't even see the center well in visible light because of the dust obscuring it, much less look past it, but we can observe other frequencies of EM radiation to get a better look at the center, like radio and infrared for example, as seen here:

casswww.ucsd.edu...

Are the images I see presented a result of lensing, or are they extrapolated from what we can see in other galaxies?

Images of the entire milky way are extrapolated from looking at other galaxies, though of course we can image part of it directly.

Originally posted by greatfriendbadfoe
How do trees get thicker as they grow if the outer layer of bark ( which is pretty think) falls off each year eg the "sock" that can be seen on say a spotted gum or the thick bark layer of an iron bark?

If you were to cut into a tree, what you would see are a series of concentric rings like this: 4.bp.blogspot.com...

Really hope I don't lose you on this part. Inside of the tree is what is called the xylem and the phloem. The xylem is basically the water transport for the tree and the phloem is the food (simple sugars) transport. During the growing season, both the xylem and the phloem grow outward and each one of these sets of dark and light rings represents a growing season. The lighter wood is the earliest part of the season when growth is speedy while the dark ring is the later part of the season when growth slows down. The center of the tree rings is called the heartwood and that would be the oldest part of the tree. As you can see, it's much smaller than the much larger rings around it to give you an idea of what the growth looks like from the inside of a tree.

Just below the bark is what is called the cambium and growth happens on both sides of it. On the barkside of the cambium, the tree will grow new cells that become the phloem and on the heartwood side, the xylem grows. As the tree is growing in diameter, the bark will split and some of the phoem will die to become the new bark. Most of the growth, however, is actually occurring on the heartwood side of the cambium and that's why, although a tree will shed its bark, it still grows thicker.

Originally posted by Mosthated718bx
Hello all, Great thread so far!
Would it be possible to use Thermo Electrical Generators on a ship during reentry? And would something like this be able to address energy issues for space flights that require a ton of it? assuming we can travel at a speed that crates enough heat for the exchange.. Like many I to have an interest in these subjects but find easier to understand through unconventional means. Thanks
Thermo Electrical Generators

You can use them just about anywhere there's a temperature differential.

But I don't follow the point on using them during re-entry for space flights that need a lot of energy. Isn't the space flight is nearly over during re-entry?

reply to post by inverslyproportional

Now at 99 pecent the speed of light, every single unit of energy you put in does exceedingly less work, as the object is now gaining very great amounts of mass relative to the amount of speed it picks up,

Sure, sure, I understand all of this, but I didn't think it fell under the definition of mass. Why don't they just say a speeding object increases in energy instead of saying it increases in mass? I really thought mass was the measurement of the physical material. Thanks to you, now I know.