/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6126319
using a telescope and looking at the same spot for a long time..

>>6126319
By looking very hard with a very big telescope.

>>6126322
Well i mean if the universe is 13 billion years old how is this possible.

>>6126323

Wait, is your question actually "How did we discover a galaxy that's 30 billion light-years away when the universe is only 13 billion years old?"

In that case, it's because the universe is also expanding. It's 30 billion light years away right now, but we're seeing the light from 12 billion years ago - and back THEN, it was much closer.

>>6126324

It's possible because of the expansion of the universe. In the first second of the Big Bang, the universe went from some singularity to about 480 billion miles in diameter. That's several million times the speed of light. Spacetime can expand faster than light. Picture a stretching membrane, on which is some molasses. The membrane is spacetime; the molasses is light.

Even today, with our stately Hubble Constant of 70 km/s per megaparsec, you find that past a distance of about 14.4 billion lightyears, the expansion of space exceeds the speed of light.

>>6126324
I'm not a scientist (yet) but this is my understanding. Take the two light waves traveling away from the dude on this planet. Even though they are both traveling at light speed they are also traveling at light speed away from each other relative to each other.

To the observer on the planet however it appears as if they are traveling 2x the speed of light away from each other. It is simply the role of the observer.

Likewise if the universe is expanding faster and faster in all directions at once. One point could be 30 billion light years away from another point despite the age of the universe only being half that if the universe is expanding at the speed of light.

Yes?

>>6126335
I dunno man, this is some complex shit.

>>6126335
no

>>6126335

No.

>>6126335
That is completely wrong and also false. Nothing in your post was a thing that is true.

>>6126338
not really.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

Does anyone ever get the feeling that, with such a small group of astronomers working on this shit, they can make any claim or assertion they want to and not be scrutinized for it since no one knows the methods anyway?

Every day it seems like someone found a new planet "that could sustain life" 5 gazillion light years away and they can tell because it's a specially shaped fuzzy dot

>>6126360
For what the OP is asking, it is fairly accurate.

Now, why is this at least the second time I have seen this exact OP posted?

>>6126369
no its not, OPs problem has nothing to do with time dilation.

>>6126335

>>6126333
Or, in other units, each light year distance is stretching 2cm/s

>>6126365

for a planet to be able to bear life you just need to find if it's in the habitable zone or not.

If you know the size of the star and its temperature you can find the habitable zone, hurray!

If you know the period of the planet around the star you can work out it's distance form the star, hurray!

Now if the planet lies inside the habitable zone it can sustain life, hurray!

Provided there is an abundance of elements crucial to life, such as carbon and oxygen and what not.

Seeing as a planet was able to form, there probably is an abundance of heavier elements that make up its core, things that form rock and metals.

Many heavy elements suggests there are also many light elements so life could very well exist on those planets.

>>6126335
>To the observer on the planet however it appears as if they are traveling 2x the speed of light away from each other
The speed of light is constant in all intertial reference frames. He will observe each traveling at the speed of light, in opposite directions. If he were to get in a spaceship and travel at 0.99c he would still measure both of them traveling at the speed of light (assuming he isn't accelerating).

>>6126381
The relativity stuff was actually irrelevant to his point. If the light reaching us now was emitted shortly after the big bang and the universe on that scale is expanding at the speed of light, then the present day distance can easily be 30 billion ly when the distance when the light was emitted was half that.

>>6126423

Still, that's a very big "could"

I feel like they're just trying to make headlines and stay relevant in a period where astronomy has largely stagnated

>>6126462
Astronomy hasn't really stagnated, though. There are still lots of observations necessary for testing various cosmological and astrophysical models.

>>6126319
Guessing by noticing a dot shimmer a certain way estimating the size and shape of said dot and assuming that is a galaxy.
This is why astronomers are often wrong.
>inb4 some faggot says they aren't
We don't even know if the gliese "planets" are actual planets...or habitable, just that they seem to be causing their star to oscillate..so they must exist! and they must exist at a certain distance! and they must have water!
>TL;DR
Faulty assumptions

>>6126369
No it really is not, its not accurate at all and does not answer OPs question
>>6126333 is a better explanation

>>6126333
>modern cosmology

>>6126333
Again, assumptions
We do not know the location of the epicenter of the big bang, nor do we know where the edge of the universe.
These are assumptions made by observing our local universe and what was born from its nebulae.
They normally guesstimate the third derivative of expansion while assuming the initial rate of expansion was zero.
>big bang
>lel

Also because the the universe isn't evenly expanding, the edges would be moving much faster than the center would generally..
Why haven't we even vectored in on the center of the universe if all of the above knowledge is true?

>>6126550
Because there is no center to the universe.

>>6126550

>epicenter of the big bang

you haven't even entered high school?

>>6126550
>We do not know the location of the epicenter of the big bang, nor do we know where the edge of the universe.

There is no "epicenter of the big bang." It happened everywhere. There are no edges, either.

>>6126550
Jesus Christ.

>>6126365
Their methods are all in the literature and the data is available. You are more than welcome to read it an analysis the data as is anyone. The fact that you yourself don't know is not grounds to call bullshit, that's just ignorance.

>>6126497
Astronomers aren't often wrong. And you have no idea what you're talking about.

If you understood planet detection you'd realise why it isn't bullshit. Take most gliese catalogue planets found by radial velocity. If the star were oscillating in an out causing the radial velocities it's output or spectrum would have to change. It doesn't so it isn't that. So the star is moving, in an orbit, work out the mass, it's a planet. Getting the distance is simple, water is hugely abundant in the universe, it's likely to have water.

Sound measurements.

>>6126550
Zero understanding of cosmology.

No center, no edge.

>>6126566
>we'll pretend
>>6126573
let, me restate this..we don't know where the center of the universe is

>>6126630

>we don't know where the center of the universe is

We do know that there is no centre of the universe.

>>6126634
>>6126634
P1:The universe is finite
P2:The universe is, in theory, measurable
C1:The universe can be measured
C2:The distance between the extents of the universe, or all matter within, can be averaged to a center point

>>6126638
>P1:The universe is finite

Not necessarily.

>C2:The distance between the extents of the universe, or all matter within, can be averaged to a center point

Even if it is finite, that's not a valid conclusion.

Please,

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

>>6126638
The observable universe is finite, the observable universe's center is the observer. Any observer however will see themselves as a center so there is no unique center.

The universe at large cannot be directly measured. Even if it were finite it could be closed and still have no edge and thus have no unique center again.

>>6126638

You seem to have misunderstood.
Nothing says the universe is finite

The observable universe is finite, and we are at it's centre - Just as the alien standing on a planet orbiting Betelguese is at its centre.

Everything expands away from us, so everyone believe they are in the centre (and they are) of their own observable universe.

This says nothing of the total universe.

>>6126550

Uh, dude, the Big Bang was everywhere, when everywhere was very, very small. It happened in your anus. It happened in your mother's mouth. It happened everywhere, which is how your mother's mouth has known your anus.

Everything was in the same spot. That's the Big Bang. Then it all got larger.

So there's no center. Everything is the center, which makes the term pointless. Expand a point into a sphere. From the viewpoint of somebody on the sphere, where's the center? Within their space, there is no center.

If you're saying that out-of-reference-point, there's a center, then sure. The center is extra-dimensional. It's in the 5th or more dimensional space that our universe is likely to be expanding into. Nobody really knows, and nobody can get to it anyways. So stop being an anus, before your mother's mouth rejoins it, and I'm not talking about a Big Crunch.

>>6126354
>>6126357
>>6126385

>2012+1
>feeding a 2/10 troll on /sci/

>>6126638
>P1:The universe is finite
>P2:The universe is, in theory, measurable
lel, we can't even observe 95% of the universe because it doesn't react in the electromagnetic spectrum.

>>6126400

Yeh, I calculated something like that. On the scale of a meter, space is expanding on the order of 10^-18 m/s. That's a million-trillionth of a meter each second. Other forces at work in matter, vastly overshadow that motion. It's about a billionth smaller than an atom's width. Brownian motion is far larger even at extremely small temperatures. It's going to be a long, long time before anyone at local scales notices the accelerating expansion of spacetime.

I like that each lightyear is getting larger by about an inch each second. That means the Centauri system is moving away from Sol a little over 1 meter each minute. Of course, that's not the net movement, since the Sol and Centauri systems have inherent speeds of 100s of km/s. Damn, space is crawling.

But the universe is so fucking big that this crawl eventually swamps the common motion of matter around the scale of superclusters. Around that scale, the summed expansion of space overcomes the speed of galaxies. That's why a supercluster is the universe's largest structure; anything larger has been disrupted already.

>>6126423
So far, 1.

1 planet.

>>6126619
Always wrong. Always. Redshift says hello.

>>6126327
So, basically, you have no idea. But you think things in a 13 billion year old universe can be 30 billion light years away from any given point in the universe.

Science. Not even once.

>>6126759
uh...do you understand inflation? That anon was right by current understanding of the universe.

Science. You should give it a try.

>>6126750

Detecting the planets was tricky enough, we can't (yet) detect whether there is life or not. That doesn't mean there isn't.

>>6126754
Who was wrong about redshift?

>>6126319
Light travels = x
The universe expands = y
It takes x time for light to travel to us, and by calculating x in relation to the standard expanse of y, we can calculate how long it would take to get to the location traveling at the speed of light.

Your understanding of light-years is falling on spatial measurements, rather than spacetime measurements.

The Galaxy is 700 million years away. (By age)
The Galaxy is 30 billion years away. (c^2)

>>6126787
Nothing. It just said "hello".

>>6126772
So, still 1.

1.000000000000000000000 ad infinitim

let me know when you find another, /sci/!

>>6126766
Yeah, I get inflation. It's why a Big Mac is $2.49 now instead of $0.99.

Still, a 30 billion year old thing inside a 13 billion year old thing? It's like you guys gave up.

>>6126788
Ah. So, what you're saying, is that the world can be 6,000 years old, but the outer edges of the universe have experienced 16,400,000,000 years of expansion.

Got it!

>>6126809
So I'll say it again, modern astronomers are rarely severely wrong.

>>6126818
Well, to be fair, only they would know if they were wrong, yes? And they would be the least likely people to admit that they have always been wrong, yes?

See, here's my problem.

They're always wrong.

>>6126818
I'd go even further; I'd say that primitive astronomers were more precise, and more accurate, given their tools, than modern astronomers could ever hope to be.

"Cosmologists are often in error, but never in doubt." -- Lev Landau

>>6126820
No. Astronomers, like all scientists, are not some unified group. There are always people out to make a name by fucking something up.

There also tens of thousands of people who studied physics or astronomy who can understand the papers.

The fact you don't understand it is not evidence they are wrong. You need evidence to make such claims.

>>6126823
On what grounds? I would stat the opposite given the lack of statistics and a much better understanding of instrumentation. Modern astronomy is more precise.

>>6126826
A man who died before the precision age of cosmology.

>>6126817
Relating age of Earth to Age of the Universe.
What you are saying is incoherent, but by assuming the closest translation that is coherent, you are wrong.

13,800,000,000 years is the Universal Age. - Anything older than this cannot be defined by Age.
The Earth has existed for 4,540,000,000 years.

What we have learned so far is that, the creation of information from the Big Bang simply displaced the finite amount of information that theoretically has always existed in it's neutral base-form. (Excluding the constant creation of information by virtual; metaphysical; transcendental; or likewise. Which we haven't come close to calculating.


The entire Universe has experienced the same duration of expansion, but the amount of expansion is not the same for all.


Less informative; more corrective;
>the world ... 6,000 years old
The 'world' is no where near 6,000 years old.
Every known "world," or location surrounded mostly by empty space is older than millions-billions of years old.

Meaning you will not find a single moon, planet, or large enough celestial entity to exist on as a "world," anywhere in the universe that is younger than millions of years old.

>>6126814
wrong inflation. That 12.8 billion year old galaxy is now 30 billion light years away because the space in between that galaxy and our own has expanded, called inflation.

>>6126814
Distance isn't equivalent to age you moron. Something can be five miles away from you; that doesn't mean it's five years old.

>>6126852
>>6126851
It's a troll post, guys.

quasi-religious confabulations embellished by mathfiction.

>>6126856
>I don't understand so it's wrong.

>>6126812
no, 12- 13 if you count our own.
http://phl.upr.edu/projects/habitable-exoplanets-catalog

>>6126862
God is a highly ambiguous word.
To give you a general idea, how many people believe in 'No'?
The idea is the same. God is just an extremely potent and versitle word with many contexts.
God can be a title, like a position of being. I have become God.
God can be a name. Hello my name is God.
God can be an expression. God damn.
God can be many more different forms.

The general idea when used in any context God is perceived in the least productive way. It is perceived as a noun.
Example: God is he; the one being.

With this information now in the public, if you are Atheist, you now are aware that you are boycotting the second most universal term.
My speculation is the boycott of the term God is being used to discredit the evasive logistics of theists who often hide behind the noun form of God by pooling their entity; soul; body; mind; lives into it.
Atheists are fucking sick of Godmode, it's as simple as that.
Atheism trumps the God entity.
Agnostics are those that choose a religion with zero trumps. Meaning, it cannot trump and it cannot be trumped.

Should be simple physics for you guys. If you have a vehicle going at design speed on a banked roadway, the horizontal component of the normal forces results in the centripetal acceleration. My question is, how do you find the amount of friction required to maintain this acceleration, (Not skid up the incline) when you increase your speed?

>>6126909
i meant to post a thread but if you know this then go ahead

>>6126909
>how do you find the amount of friction...
Friction does not have any relation.
In these scales, friction is replaced by gravity.
Friction would be pertinent to objects interacting with objects, rather than objects relationship to other objects that are influenced by spacetime.

I'm not saying friction has zero influence on these scales, but the value would be the infinitesimal.
The movements are relative to moving into the exact position of the position in front, rather than overlapping.

>>6126638
go back to your popsci documentaries pleb

>>6126319
wif a tellyscowpe

>>6126462
Astronomers do not make the headlines, the media does, they're the ones to blame for the improper use or transmission of information to the public.

>>6126462
>stagnated
wat?!?!
>over 1k exoplanets discovered in the last 10 years
>over 30 habitable exoplanets awaiting confirmation
>first experiments to understand what the other 95% of the universe is made of currently underway
This is the golden age of astronomy and cosmology!!!

>>6126651
Of course it cannot be directly measured, but the matter within the universe is measurable in theory..
>>6126654
I'm not confusing the observable universe guys...
I'm saying you can only make assumptions of the whole fucking universe by observing the local universe.
Its like seeing a small cloud in the sky and saying because of it, it is raining in Dubai
>>6126716
>the whole purpose of my point
How can you give attributes to something you've never actually observed

>our local universe has this much expansion/redshift to etc.
>the whole universe must have the same thing!11


>>6127069
You've given me the best counter-argument anon.

>believes the big bang

>>6127353
>but the matter within the universe is measurable in theory.
No it isn't. Only the observable universe and never at one time.

>I'm saying you can only make assumptions of the whole fucking universe by observing the local universe.
You calmed the universe was finite, that has nothing to do with this.

You have not addressed the reasons why you were wrong.

>How can you give attributes to something you've never actually observed
It's effects can be observed. And you can work out the attributes to things not observed, that's theoretical physics.

>the whole universe must have the same thing!11
Nobody in cosmology makes that claim. But the whole observable universe is expanding.

>>6127353
>the whole purpose of my point
really? cuz that's not the impression I got from your post.
>local universe
top lel.

>>6126423
It doesn't need to be in the habital zone necessarily. First off that definition is based on our encounters of life, which regardless of if all life follows the same patterns or not we still only have a limited view. Perhaps we don't need liquid water for life, which is what the habitable zone is based off. Even if we do, Europa while not a planet, has liquid water and it is way past the habitable zone. Also some definitions of the habitable zone exclude mars, which likely at one time did have liquid water.

So what's the evidence that the big bang happened? Nothing? Why are you fags better than Christians?

>>6127806

So does the universe expand faster than light? How is that possible?

>>6127806
Do you actually want an answer?

Because here it is.

The reason we think the Big Bang happened is that it explains a whole lot of stuff. First, we know that space is expanding - run that expansion backwards and everything's all compressed into one point.

Second, there's the Cosmic Microwave Background,
>>6127823
What this means is that, at one time, the universe was both very small and very hot - and that very fast expansion made it very FLAT. In fact, measurements of the cosmic microwave background matched the valued predicted by Big Bang cosmology with INCREDIBLE precision. In other words, the theory was able to predict new observations - one of the basic marks of a real scientific theory.

Thirdly, there's the isotopic ratios of light elements in the universe. Again, these closely match the percentages that would have formed in the moments after the Big Bang, during the period where the universe was compressed and hot enough for elements to fuse all throughout space and time.

Also, the time the Big Bang was estimated to have cooled down enough to form stars closely matches the estimated time of formation of the oldest observed stars. (This is not because we estimated those ages based on the Big Bang - they're separate calculations. In fact, for a long time, a group of galaxies which appeared significantly older than that posed a serious problem for Big Bang cosmology, until it turned out that it was actually just a perspective trick- a much closer, younger galaxy that appeared to be in the same area as a much older, further group.)

Also, the lumpy, filament-like structure of space closely match what we'd expect if quantum fluctuations were blown up to universal scale by the expansion of space.

>>6127835
There's a limit to how fast matter and energy can move, but there's no limit to how fast space itself can move. The stars aren't rushing away from us: The space between us is just expanding. As for what's making it expand - we're really not sure.

>The realisation that our solar system is about a 3rd as old as our universe
Am I the only one that finds this strange? It makes our universe seem extremely young to me.
It means that our sun is probably only a second or third generation star (yeah I know it doesn't really work like that).
If we ever become intelligent enough to survive till the heat death of our universe we could be known as one of the most ancient starter species.

>>6127847
Yeah. That's one of the proposed solutions fo the Fermi paradox - "Well, someone has to be first."

If it's true, we get to be the Forerunners every single science fiction novel has! We're going to build SO much enigmatic shit and SO many pointless superweapons lying around.

>>6126333
Quick question about this.
I get that space doesn't have mass so it can travel faster than the speed of light. However, how can galaxies drift apart as well? So the universe started say 13.5 billion years ago. Now say the Milky Way and the Andromeda were only several feet. Then say in a few hours the Andromeda Galaxy was further than what the speed of light would have allowed? Don't galaxies have masses. So just how is space expanding so that the distance between galaxies increases faster than the speed of light?

>>6127873
Simple - the mass isn't really "moving" at all. The space it's in is. Space expanding means that distances get bigger over time, simple as that - which means it looks like things are accelerating away, when in fact they're staying still and the universe itself is just getting bigger. Imagine that the galaxies are dots on a balloon, and you then blow up the balloon - the dots get further apart. The dots aren't moving relative to space - but they're IN space, so when space expands, they move apart with it.

>>6127853
>all science fiction novels are actually historical texts from the future beamed into the heads of authors to let us know how cool we become.

>>6127889
So scientology is real? Thanks Tom Cruise!

>>6127841
>The reason we think the Big Bang happened is that it explains a whole lot of stuff.
So, pretty much the same thing as religion?

>>6127962
Literally all of science is "The reason we think that the universe works like this is that it explains a whole lot of stuff."

The definition of a theory is "explains a whole lot of stuff" and "makes testable predictions." The big-bang inflationary cosmology model both explains a huge number of cosmological phenomena AND made a famously successful experimental prediction in the form of the cosmic microwave background.

>>6127964
Religion is science according to you.

>>6126432
Sorry I've been gone all day. I seem to have failed to explain myself well enough.

If I'm standing on a planet and send out one beam of light one way and a second beam of light an opposite direction and they arrive at different points 1 minute later the two objects are NOT in fact 2 light minutes apart but only 1 light minute apart because the speed of light cannot be broken even when it's nonsense

Just reading this thread and the little knowledge i have on cosmology.

Could our universe be a sphere with us on the outside of it? We observe it as flat for the same reason we observe our earth as flat when we are on its surface.

Expansion of space makes more sense to me if we're on a sphere.

I'm a high school drop out who just enjoys reading things over my head though so I'm probably completely dull with this idea.

I'm happy for you all to call my idiots if you tell me why we aren't on a sphere

>>6127970
See this just doesn't make sense to me.
Imagine for a moment we could go light speed, i get in my light speed shipand head 'north' for a year, and you in yours head 'south' are we not now 2 light years apart?

So if this galaxy is heading one direction and us the other, aren't we moving away from each other at double our own individual speeds?

>>6126654
>Betelguese
Is that Ford's planet?

>>6127578
Scroll up
>>6127570
My point is, that a distance between objects/matter in the universe exist.
Is the theory of a finite universe "wrong" anon? Can it be proven "wrong"?

>keyword theory

>>6127570
>Nobody in cosmology makes that claim. But the whole observable universe is expanding.
>The universe is x years old based on the expansion in our observable universe which is most likely a miniscule part of the universe

>>6127975
You need a better understanding of:

A. Quantum Physics
B. Gravity
C. Differential Geometry
D. Optional: Quantum Gravity

It is marginally possible that the Universe is, in fact, a sphere. Very unlikely though.

>>6127979
No. That's the whole point of Special Relativity. Time dilates and space contracts relative to speed.

One thing you have to understand is that you always move at a speed 0 relative to yourself. That should be obvious. If I leave the Earth going 0.9 c away from the North Pole, and you leave going 0.9 c away from the South Pole, then an observer on Earth will see us both moving at 0.9 c. However, I will not see you moving at 1.8 c. Rather, I will see you moving at about 0.9945 c. This will be consistent for me, because the distance will not be as great (because space contracts).

People come to /sci/ with this notion that scientists are really a bunch of ivory tower faggots, and since I couldn't understand this and that when I watched Cosmos, that means the field is fundamentally flawed.

I mean what the actual fuck? This is the fucking science board. Go to /x/ if you want to explain how everyone with an education is lying. Your ignorance only serves to demonstrate your own lack of understanding, not others'. If you actually cared to learn about reality, you wouldn't be so fucking ignorant anymore.

>>6128010
>>6128011
You are totally missing the point that to look 'out' into the universe is also to look back into the past, the further you look the older the light you are looking at, thus we can observe what the very early universe looked like.

We cannot look at much of the current universe because the light being created does not, and will never have, enough time to get to us, the space between us is expanding faster than light can overcome.

Something I don't understand, why do people say the universe is as the big bang? Wouldn't the matter that existed before the big bang be part of the universe?

>>6128067
All of matter existed before the big bang at a single point.

The moment it began expanding is the big bang. Look around for the fun chart of how many fractions of a second it took for the energy to become low enough for the building blocks of our entire universe to form. Fun stuff.

13.8 billion years is the age of the universe. In a universe with a stable size. It would be true that the observable universe had a radius of 13.8 billion lightyears. Our universe is at the moment expanding with about a speed of 3 times the speed of light. Henceforth the objects we see now are much further away than they were when the light was emitted. The observable universe has at this moment a radius of about 46 billion lightyears.

>>6128033
By universe, you mean the observable universe,
or the rest of the universe we have no data on?

>>6128028

>i will not see you moving at speed 1.8c

Of course not but the distance between you will still be changing by that much which was the original point of sending two ships in opposite directions. So if we are in a part of the universe going in one direction we would see light from the other side of the universe going in the opposite direction or red-shifting away and it would look like 30 billion light years away because it had expanded that way for a while before expansion slowed down.

>>6128191
>Our universe is at the moment expanding with about a speed of 3 times the speed of light.

This is wrong. It doesn't have a speed, only a rate. Or in other words, how fast things are moving away depends on how far away they are. There is a distance at which space is expanding (from us) at 1 m/s. There is a distance at which it is expanding (from us) at a million times the speed of light.

>>6128221
>Of course not but the distance between you will still be changing by that much

Only in the rest frame of the Earth. In the reference frame of either traveler the distance is increasing at 0.9945 C.

Alright help me understand this physics fags

If I am 6 light years away from earth and I look at earth does that mean that I will see the earth as it was 6 years ago from today?

>>6128264
Good luck seeing it

>>6128264

Yeah.

>>6128270

So technically if I wanted I could see my mom fucking my dad and creating me if I was far enough away and had a strong enough telescope or whatever

>>6128271

Yes and no. To see 1 year in the past you have to be 1 lightyear away. But to get 1 lightyear away will take at least 1 year. So when you're there, you still can't see in the past, because you're 1 year in the future seeing 1 year back, i.e. right now.

>>6126319
How do we know the universe is expanding, when we could be shrinking?

>>6127981

It's the sun of Ford's planet

>>6128067
>why do people say the universe is as the big bang?
You mean why do they say the universe BEGINS at the Big Bang? Well we don't know for certain, but the simplest models we have to explain the Big Bang have all four dimensions--including time--expanding from a very tiny or even infinitesimal point. It is literally the first point in time.

Alternatively, even if the Big Bang is not in fact the origin of time, it is still the origin of everything we could observe, so it might as well be the beginning of the universe.

>>6127853
>>6127847

>humans are the first intelligent species in the universe

This is my personal favorite theory to explain the lack of ETs. If it were true it would give so much more meaning to life and maybe unite the world to explore the cosmos and spread intelligence, as it is our responsibility and purpose in the universe.

>>6129010
>If it were true it would give so much more meaning to life
The meaning of life is loneliness?

Statistically, the notion that we are the first seems profoundly unlikely to me.

>>6129014
>The meaning of life is loneliness?

Not loneliness, specialness. Maybe intelligent life to develop and thrive to the point of space travel is so insanely improbable that it might as well be impossible but here we are, somehow beating the odds. You could even say it's a miracle.

>>6129038

Considering we live in a world that's pretty well shielded from all sorts of calamities, including solar flares, asteroids, etc, it's actually not that improbable.

Of course we'll have the odd event every hundred million years that wipes out about 70% of the life on earth, but that just gives a lot of new territory for the remaining species to proliferate and evolve.

>>6129065

>Considering we live in a world that's pretty well shielded from all sorts of calamities, including solar flares, asteroids, etc

Do we know how many planets have these shieldings though? The shielding, especially from asteroids thanks to Jupiter seems pretty lucky for earth.

>>6129080

The shielding is actually mainly from our own atmosphere and magnetic field. It also helps that we're a tiny little rock in the middle of space which cuts down the statistical probability of any asteroid/comet scoring a direct impact.

Why would Jupiter matter?

>>6129080
Considering there are around 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets in the observable universe, it hardly matters how bad the odds are. Even if only one planet in a thousand is in the habitable zone, and of those only one in a million has the proper geomagnetic and gravitational shields, that still leaves six trillion candidate planets.

>>6129086
Jupiter's gravitational field pulls most long-period comets away from Earth, but I'd hardly call it essential to life.

>>6129088

And thanks to our own mortality and the speed limit of light, we'll probably never see any of them :(

>>6129038
>I'm a special little snowflake
We will never colonize the galaxy, never mind even a minute section of our own solar system.

Astronomical distances are too great, and if you even mention FTL I will punch you in the face.

>>6129104

>i will punch you in the face

Honestly we have unnecessarily aggressive people like you to thank for our future losses.

If people could put aside their carnal nature to fight then goals like colonizing the galaxy would be feasible.

>>6129107
>goals like colonizing the galaxy would be feasible
The Milky Way is over 100,000 light years in diameter. So no, this is not feasible.

Colonizing the Solar System, on the other hand, should be feasible in perhaps a century.

>>6129104
Yes we will. Neither time or distance matter when we have become transhuman robots.

Problem solved without FTL.

>>6129123

The only thing keeping us from interstellar travel is breaking the speed limit of light just like we broke the speed limit of sound. The answer is likely in quantum manipulation, and the more people can put aside their petty egos the faster we can find the answer.

>Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when pairs (or groups) of particles are generated or interact in ways such that the quantum state of each member must subsequently be described relative to each other.

The answer to all of our problems lies in this statement, just you watch.

>>6129144
>The only thing keeping us from interstellar travel is breaking the speed limit of light
You cannot "break" light speed. What you are saying is effectively the equivalent of "breaking" the universe.

>The answer is likely in quantum manipulation
Oh, "quantum manipulation". That definitely isn't a term you just made up.

>Quantum entanglement is a cool phenomenon that I don't understand but will pretend is relevant
FTFY. Read about the no-communication theorem.

>>6129154

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100917111118.htm

Quantum manipulation just means manipulating atoms and the pieces that make them up.

And entanglement can change superposition faster than the speed of light can travel.

http://www.livescience.com/27920-quantum-action-faster-than-light.html

Our universe is far queerer than any of us could ever suppose.

>>6129164
>Quantum manipulation just means manipulating atoms and the pieces that make them up.
So does every chemical reaction qualify as "quantum manipulation"? Can eating a cheeseburger send me faster than light?

>And entanglement can change superposition faster than the speed of light can travel.
But no information is transferred, and nothing moves. Again, check out the no-communication theorem. It's the theorem that proves that entanglement cannot be used to communicate information faster than light.

Which is important, because you know, causality is nice.

>>6129144
>speed limit of sound.
You just don't get it, we were breaking the speed of sound with guns way before a supersonic airplane was invented, this was not some universal limit that we worked some physics magic on and suddenly the modern era was born, it was mostly just a structural material issue. The speed of light is inviolate.

>Quantum entanglement
You have no idea what this is about if you think it's going to lead to some kind of star trek transporter or warp drive.

>>6129135
This is the only semi-credible solution, von Neumann FTW!

>>6127966
the poor lamen got lost on his way to /pol/

>>6129176

Anyone who brings up Star Trek or Star Wars in any conversation about science proves they have nothing constructive to add to any conversation.

>>6126360
Thanks for the laughs man. That was an epic thing to say !

Habitability may be less than we suspected before. If we take Sol as a baseline, it's an unusual sun for the G-class. It has 25% more metallicity, and the Kepler Probe showed that G-class stars tend to be more variable than Sol.

I'm reading a great book called "Rare Earth". I highly recommend.

http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Complex-Uncommon-Universe/dp/0387952896

>>6129176

Colonizing the galaxy at an average of 1/100th LS can be accomplished in at most 10 million years. If that's too fast (and it may be for stellar travel punctuated by colonization stops) then 1/1000th LS average propagation brings it to 100 million. Humans at the end of the wave won't recognize their progenitors at all.

>>6129164
I see you are new to science!

>>6129214
Ten million years is a long time. Humans have not existed that long. Neither have Chimpanzees.

I'm not saying this is technically impossible, but trying to foresee hundreds of thousands of generations into the future is a futile exercise.

> How did we discover a galaxy that is 30 billion light years away?

> 30 billion light years away?

30 billion light years away taking into account the expansion of the universe. Now tell me, that light is 700 million years old. was that universe 30 billion light years away 700 million years ago? or was it... I dunno... maybe about... 700 million light years away?

>>6129342
You're right of course, but you don't have to be a douchebag about it. That we can see objects more than 14 billion light years away is not intuitive for most people.

>>6126319
If light is so fast, how come I can see it?

>>6129409
>That we can see the light emitted from objects when they were considerably closer than 14 billion light years away, should be intuitive for most people.
FTFY

>>6129415
The retinal neurons in your eyes have protein receptors that can be altered by photons. This input produces an output from the cell and is relayed to other neurons in the areas of the brain that processes visual information. Then you "see"

>>6129415
There isn't really a fundamental difference between the way opsins in our eyes work and the way chlorophyll in chloroplasts work. It's just photosensitive chemistry.

>>6129185
no fun allowed