/sci/ - Science & Math

If you were on a train travelling 200 km/h, for 85 years, you'd travel 1 AU (150 million km)

>>11957018
Just look at you mom.

>>11957074
that's all numbers
>>11957018
it's because big distances aren't "seen" by any sensory organ, they are literally "seen" by numbers

>>11957018
>i just see numbers
close. it's an array of numbers

>>11957631
arrays are just numbers, no difference

>>11957629
Yes but it's everyday speed and everyday time length. You can multiply that time by 100 billion to get to Andromeda, but that can't be "understood" anymore.

>>11957633
>85 years
>everyday time length

>>11957637
Your whole lifetime, perfectly ordinary.

>>11957644
yeah we observe that all the time

>>11957649
Whatever age you are you can multiply that by 2 or 3

>>11957650
1. that's just numbers
2. you can't see your life from birth until now, that's not a thing

its all just relativity, anon. your brain can comprehend the distances if you think about it in different ways.
https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
this ^ is a pretty cool website to see the relative size of the universe, if the moon was 1 pixel large. check it out
https://htwins.net/scale2/
this is also an awesome website to see the sizes of things

basically, its all in your head. everything needs some degree of understanding to comprehend, its all just a matter of connecting the synapses, if im making any sense. nature isnt changing anytime soon, so its up to you to discover it! which is the best part of science :)

>>11957660
But can't you at least imagine how long that would be for a person? You're probably going to have to live with numbers on this one

>>11957701
i'm not being difficult just to be difficult, but imagining long periods of elapsed time can't help you see long tracts of space, it's not the same kind of dimension

>>11957018

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” - Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

>>11957018
yes elite dangerous

>>11957018
just try to llok ahead of you, space is longer then whatever you can see, easy fix

>>11957018
I think the best method is visualizing comparisons like "if Sun would be a grain of sand in Australia, then star X would be a grain of sand in Texas" but this is obviously very limited

>>11957018
Start with our own solar system and you will soon see. Unlock your scroll wheel and see how long you can last
https://www.joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

>>11957018
Download Space Engine. http://spaceengine.org/

It's mostly used for cool wallpapers, but can also give you a minor existential crisis when you see millions of galaxies whipping by you at every second.

>>11958197
not OP but I just saw this on steam with VR support. Downloading now, time to fire up the vive pro. I've been wanting something like this, cheers

>>11958285
My advice: don't go near the black holes. Seeing space-time warp around you is pretty unsettling, I can't imagine doing it in VR

>>11957018
Sort of related to OP's question - how do I get a feel for large (and in a lot of cases, unknown) quantities and distributions? A lot of the math nerds I know are really good at this, whether its intuition or visualization or both, idk.

>>11958314
When numbers start to get large, like on the cosmic level, it's pretty hard for our brains to truly grasp it. Our brains aren't meant to handle the concept of infinity.

Reichenbach and Kant. The function of imagination in the cognition of science. That I can imagine a three sided figure, or even a six sided figure, but not a 1200 sided figure, makes the latter no less real in the conceptual sense. I don't know, I can't remember anything I've said literally nothing in this post.

>>11957018
Hi! My name is Robert Burnham. The cosmological distances are so incomprehensibly large, I created a model to help you understand them. You've most certainly encountered my model before, even if you've never heard of me.

In my model, sometimes referred to as the Burnham scale, a speck two-thousandths of a mm across representing the Earth lies one inch away from a speck of dust a hundredth of an inch across representing the Sun. The planet Mercury is four-tenths of an inch from the Sun, Venus nearly three-quarters of an inch, Mars at 1.6 inches, Jupiter at 5 inches, Saturn at just under 10 inches, Uranus at 19 inches, Neptune at 30 inches, and Pluto at 39.5 inches. One way of visualizing the Burnham scale is to stand with an outstretched arm; the tips of your fingers to the center of your body approximates the radial distance of Neptune or Pluto from the Sun.

Alpha Centauri is 4.5 lightyears away. On the Burnham scale, it's 4.5 miles away.

Since all stars in the Galaxy are several lightyears apart, with each represented by a speck of dust, each star in the Galaxy is separated from its neighbors by miles. They're practically isolated.

The span of the Milky Way Galaxy on this scale is about 100000 miles. It's enormously big compared with the Solar System: 6.336 billion inches vs 80 inches for the Solar System.

The nearest galaxy, Andromeda, is 2.5 million lightyears away. That's 2.5 million miles away on the Burnham scale.

Andromeda and the Milky Way are members of the Local Group of galaxies, which is itself is part of galaxy clusters - which are part of galaxy superclusters.

The model is fairly accurate, because there are 63360 inches in a mile and there are 63294 Astronomical Units in a lightyear.

While my model is well-known and often used to help illustrate the vast distances of the cosmos, it's a curious fact of the modern age that the people who believe gravity is the dominant force in the universe have never deeply engaged my model.

>>11958304
My first VR experience was with "overview, scale of the universe" and it changed me inside.
I felt like a god, hovering over the solar system with everything whizzing around the bright sun.
Try it if you get a chance

>>11957018
I just don't think about it and accept the numbers. Kind of like people who want to visualize 3+x dimensions, don't visualize just add an axis and compute.

>>11958380
Wish I could hop onto VR, but new computer comes first. And hopefully by the time I buy VR, they'll fix the motion sickness issues I've heard about

>>11958405
Motion sickness hasn't been an issue for me and I play jet fighter simulators. You need a PC that can keep your framerate above 90 to avoid sickness. 90 frames per second is the magic number. GTX 1080 at least.
I've felt it only once with a free roller coaster game with horrible optimization (was notorious for it) and I resisted the urge to throw the headset off and powered through it. Once your brain comes to grips with what is happening, it goes away.
Most of the "sciencey" experiences are very gentle and relaxing anyway.

>>11958433
That's good to hear, my next computer is going to have a GTX 2080, so I should be set. Thanks, anon

>>11957018
Here's one for very small local scale.

Look at a globe of the world. See Australia. Now look at the moon. The width of Australia is approximately the same as the width of the Moon.

If you are familiar with features of the moon you can guesstimate distance such as Brisbane to Sydney, or Sydney to Adelaide by using your imagination to superimpose a map of Australia over the moon.
Likewise you can get an idea of how big the Earth would appear from the moon by using your imagination to superimpose a circle over the moon which is as relatively large as the globe of the Earth is to Australia.

You will also realize just how fucking small the moon is. Or big. Depending.

"Wow this thing is reeeeeeeaaaallly far from the other thing"
Then go to sleep

>>11958356
nice anon

>>11958447
RTX faggot

>>11958356
>it's a curious fact of the modern age that the people who believe gravity is the dominant force in the universe have never deeply engaged my model.
That's because if they did, then they'd quickly be forced admit to themselves that Gravity isn't the dominant & controlling force in the universe, and that the dominant & controlling force is the Electric force (which is 1000 billion billion billion BILLION times stronger than gravity).

>>11958883
>which is 1000 billion billion billion BILLION times stronger than gravity).
which is the exact reason why + and - neutralize each other at short distances, at any long distance everything is neutral

>>11957018
Put it this way - if the Sun were a beach ball and the planet Jupiter was a marble, Earth would be about the size of your penis.

>>11958883
That's why you can't make a planet or another cosmic body electrically charged, the more charged it becomes, the more it attracts opposite charges to neutralize itself.