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Velociraptor42

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  1. Velociraptor42
    What? What could meteorites have to do with skydiving?



    If you watched that video, congratulations, you saw nothing! Well, unless you are extremely observant that is. Here's a slowed down gif so you can see what's going on a bit better.



    That would be a meteor during it's "dark flight" phase. This happens when the meteorite reaches terminal velocity and starts falling straight down due to drag forces and blah blah blah and we have never gotten footage of this before. Which means that the fact this skydiver caught it on his helmet cam is pretty incredible. In fact, the chances have been calculated to be that of winning the lottery....three times in a row.

    It produces a pretty awesome collage picture as well


    Source
  2. Velociraptor42
    Ok, so. If you were to somehow make the grave mistake of falling into a black hole, what would happen? Obviously the answer is die. That bit isn't debatable. Sorry to burst your bubble.

    However, there are three main ideas of what would happen. Either you would be spaghettified, toasted, or scrambled. Unfortunately, none of these options are as appetizing as they sound.

    For a long time, physicists believed matter would be spaghettified upon entering a black hole. That's the legitimate term for it. Spaghettification. Anyways. Because of the intense gravitational pull of the singularities postulated to be at the center of black holes, the matter at your feet would be pulled much faster than that at your head, leading to an object being stretched and sucked in to the middle.

    The problem with this theory of black holes - namely, one with a singularity at the center - is it violates the conservation of information. Ever since Hawking Radiation was introduced and it was realized that black holes will slowly leak quantum information over time until they evaporate, spaghettification has been thrown out the window. Sorry Italy.

    Idea number two is that there is nothing inside a black hole. The event horizon is in fact a ring of fire, you would be burnt upon entry and scattered back into the rest of the universe, and there is nothing inside the horizon. Nothing. Meaning that black holes would be a rip in the universe itself. This has obvious issues as it violates the Theory of General Relativity. No big deal of couse.

    Theory number three: scrambled eggs. Rather than an event horizon, this black hole would have an "apparent horizon" that would scramble any matter and information that passed it, and still no singularity. Which means that this one also violates General Relativity. Whoops.

    This
    explains it better than me, with fun animation too!
    This is making me hungry.
  3. Velociraptor42
    Though we may not think of plants as moving things, we are sorely mistaken. The force of an opening flower may be very low - in the micro if not nano newtons - but as they exist and move, they are physics. Enjoy some beauty of nature, all dictated by the ever-present laws of physics.

    photo credit to Yutaka Kitamura






    Source
  4. Velociraptor42
    The Standard Model theorizes that the Higgs Field switched on about 100 picoseconds after the big bang. Recently, though, physicists have theorized that it happened a little more gradually than "switching on" in a process more like water boiling. When these bubbles of Higgs Field met, they created massive shockwaves that would have come with sonic booms. In one of the most cool theories in the early universe, the noise would have sounded a lot like thunder.

    or this


    (let's see if this cooperates and embeds this time)
    Regardless, researchers are now trying to hear the leftovers of this sonic boom.

    SPACE THUNDER.
  5. Velociraptor42
    Cytherean mountains (AKA mountans on planet Venus) cannot be seen directly. The surface of our sister planet is completely obscured by the thick clouds that also heat the surface to a balmy 900 or so degrees Fahrenheit. So, how do we know that the mountains are there?

    Fluids, of course! (dear god why)

    To put it simply (seeing as I can't make it more complicated if I wanted) the atmosphere of Venus is more like an ocean than a conventional Earth-like atmosphere, with a hotter under layer and cooler top layer. When the lower atmosphere passes over an obstacle such as a mountain, it causes ripples up top, much like an ocean wave after passing over an underwater mountain. Actually, studying that is what lead to the realization of yes, this indeed means Cytherean mountains

    so, have some pictures of indirect proof of mountains

  6. Velociraptor42
    I nearly forgot the story of the month! Or, at this piont, last month. St. Patrick's day to be exact.

    Anyways, physicists have now detected direct proof of the big bang and, more specifically, inflation! I can't explain it very well, but my source is not cooperating, so I shall try. Because of the vast size of the universe, there hasn't been enough time for light and information to get from one end to the other. So how is it all the same temperature?

    That's where inflation comes into play. As the less than a trillionth of a second old universe inflated faster than the speed of light, making everything in that huge range the same temperature. Any small fluctuations in the field blew up into huge structures of the universe. Now, researchers have detected the swirly polarization that would have happened to light in one of those fluctuations.

    Meaning that we have now seen for the first time direct proof of inflation, and into the beginning of the universe itself.

    But really, if you're at all interested, check this out and scroll to where you see the pictures
  7. Velociraptor42

    Growing Snow

    By Velociraptor42,

    I'll admit that this has more to do with chemistry than physics, but really when it boils down to it, everything is physics.

    EVERYTHING

    To celebrate that the snow is over (hopefully), let's watch how it grows in the first place

    http://vimeo.com/87342468

    Quite beautiful, isn't it? Especially with the music and all. So why do they grow that way? Well, it all has to do with the formation of hydrogen bonds. Usually, when water goes below the freezing temperature, the bonds form a nice crystal-lattice structure that leads to regular ice. However, due to the changing temperatures within clouds and the fact that hydrogen bonds form hexagonal structures, snowflakes happen. They start as hexagonal prisms that slowly form arms and branches while transitioning from temperature to temperature, resulting in the special snowflakes we all know and love - as long as they stay in the winter where they should be

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYrF3sFBY20's a video that shows it nicely
  8. Velociraptor42
    Currently, we use a method called astronomical parallax to measure the distance from the Earth to various stars among our home galaxy and others. Well, we'll still be using it. Unfortunately, this post isn't about a literal tape measure from Earth to the stars.

    The usual way of measuring distance has to do with observing angles as the Earth goes around the sun, as is illustrated below


    But now, we have found a way to utilize the Hubble Space Telescope for yet another purpose: spacial scanning. With this new technique, we won't have to wait the half a year it takes for the Earth to move far enough around the sun to make these measurements. Instead, we can use the famous space telescope to make measurements that are correct within 5 billionths of a degree.

    The hope is that the more precise measurements will allow us to delve deeper into the mystery of dark energy.

    Read the article here

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