| Author |
Message |
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
 Mon Mar 01, 2004 11:27 am A quick lesson in the scale of the cosmos. |
|
Earth is about 8000 miles in diameter.
Jupiter is about 88000 miles in diameter.
The sun is about 865000 miles in diameter (and it is only a medium sized star).
The sun is 93 million miles away. This is called 1 AU, or 1 Astronomical Unit. It takes light moving at 186000 miles per second 7 minutes to travel this distance.
Pluto's average distance away from the sun is about 39.7 AU, or 3692100000 miles (about 3.5 billion miles).
After this distance, AU become almost obsolete, because anything all that significant past pluto is trillions upon trillions of miles away. After this distance, we usually approximate things with lightyears or ly. Lightyears are NOT a measure of time, but a measure of distance. It is the distance light travels in 1 year in a vacuum, about 63000 AU/year or about 5.8 trillion miles.
The nearest star (other than our sun) is about 4.2 lightyears away
The milky way is about 100,000 lightyears, and contains billions of stars.
The visible universe is about 15 billion lightyears across. This is only the visible universe, remember, the universe could be MUCH larger than that. At 15 billion ly away we cannot see any more, because light simply has not had enough time since the beginning of the universe to reach us!
Also, one more thing to ponder. When we look at objects billions upon billions of lightyears away, like quasars and radio galaxies, it is quite possible that those objects no longer exist. It has taken light billions of years to reach us from those objects, so we are just now only able to see them the way they were billions of years ago.
Also, don't use any of this information in an essay, because I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the information above, I didn't double check my sources...but this is pretty much common knowledge, so I don't think you should have a problem with the information above.
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Mon Mar 08, 2004 11:34 pm |
|
This is the only topic on this page without a reply as of right now. That's kind of sad. Am I the only one who finds this fascinating?
Hehe, whatever, I don't really care.
*burps*
|
|
|
Gladiator
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 132
Location: Elysium
|
| Mon Mar 08, 2004 11:40 pm Re: A quick lesson in the scale of the cosmos. |
|
| EnsignParis wrote: | Also, one more thing to ponder. When we look at objects billions upon billions of lightyears away, like quasars and radio galaxies, it is quite possible that those objects no longer exist. It has taken light billions of years to reach us from those objects, so we are just now only able to see them the way they were billions of years ago.
|
that sounds realy complicated do you know anymore stuff?
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Tue Mar 09, 2004 10:20 am |
|
It's not all that complicated once you sit down and think about it, it's simple math really.
To see something, we need light reflecting on it, and the light reflecting off of that object we are seeing is moving approximately 186000 miles per second (the speed of light).
Now, we are so incredibly far away from some things in the universe, some objects are 13, 14 or even 15 billion lightyears away. It takes the light that was reflected off of these objects 13, 14 or 15 billion years to reach us from its source, so we are now just seeing these objects that are so far away.
But it took up to 15 billion years for the produced/reflected light (stars produce their own light, but it still moves at the same speed) to reach us from the source. In the span of 15 billion years, a lot can happen, including the death/birth of stars, supernovae, galaxies are even affected. Things like radio galaxies and quasars are only found at incredible distances, implying that they were only around during the first years of the universe, 15 billion years ago.
Oh, I know plenty of more stuff, ask away and we'll see if I can answer it.
Last edited by EnsignParis on Sat Mar 13, 2004 10:07 am; edited 1 time in total
|
|
|
Gladiator
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 132
Location: Elysium
|
| Tue Mar 09, 2004 11:33 pm |
|
That was pure genius  so basically we can see into the past at far distances like a time machine  .
What do you know about small particles...like electrons, neutrons, protons and even smaller stuff?
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Wed Mar 10, 2004 1:19 am |
|
Well, there is a lot to be discussed about protons, neutrons electrons and such, in fact there is a study of it. Chemistry  .
Once you get into smaller things other than protons, neutrons and electrons, we start to get into quantum physics, higher dimensional space (ie more than the 3 spatial dimensions you are probably familiar with and the 1 temporal dimension (time)).
Quantum physics is well out of my leauge, and I once tried reading a book that touched on higher dimensional space, and I couldn't really comprehend what the author was talking about once I got further into the book.
If you want to get it it's called Hyperspace by Michio Kaku. It is quite thought provoking, but it definately gets quite hard to read toward the middle (which is where I stopped).
Back to your original question about protons/neutrons/electrons though. I need a bit more detail on what exactly it is you want to know, because there is quite a bit. One could write a book on it.
| Gladiator wrote: | That was pure genius so basically we can see into the past at far distances like a time machine .
|
Thank you. And simply put, yes. Yes, we can.
Also, I heard something quite odd that discribed this quite well. If it were possible to travel faster than light, then we could travel far away from earth at superluminal speeds and look back at the earth, and look at the light being reflected off of it, and we could see Hitler's troops marching into Poland, like it was happening right then and there.
Now, of course that's not possible, because A - Current physics says that it is impossible to travel faster than light. And B - Even if we could travel that fast, there would be no way to focus a telescope today to recieve that much detail from so far away. We would have to travel a good 60 lightyears out to be able to see that, since WW2 started a good 60 years ago.
|
|
|
Gladiator
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 132
Location: Elysium
|
| Wed Mar 10, 2004 10:12 pm |
|
| EnsignParis wrote: | Also, I heard something quite odd that discribed this quite well. If it were possible to travel faster than light, then we could travel far away from earth at superluminal speeds and look back at the earth, and look at the light being reflected off of it, and we could see Hitler's troops marching into Poland, like it was happening right then and there.
|
wowy I never thought of that! I think that i would have to agree that it would be impossible to see from that far distance in detail. To see back in time i think that we would have to travel much more farther than 60 light years though....like more like over a million light years. Then as we increased in distance we could trace the origins of the earth and even the solar system and eventually the milky way....ohhh that sounds so exciting
I wanted to know about small particles about what they are made of. Like they say an atom is mostly empty space. Like as big as an auditorium but i'm talking in relative scale. Then they talk about how atoms and their electrons are not really organized in order like with the little circles they draw on the pictures but actually they move randomly. Also they talk about smaller particles that form electrons, protons and neutrons. These is the stuffs i'd like to know about.
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Thu Mar 11, 2004 6:25 pm |
|
| Gladiator wrote: | | EnsignParis wrote: | Also, I heard something quite odd that discribed this quite well. If it were possible to travel faster than light, then we could travel far away from earth at superluminal speeds and look back at the earth, and look at the light being reflected off of it, and we could see Hitler's troops marching into Poland, like it was happening right then and there.
|
wowy I never thought of that! I think that i would have to agree that it would be impossible to see from that far distance in detail. To see back in time i think that we would have to travel much more farther than 60 light years though....like more like over a million light years. Then as we increased in distance we could trace the origins of the earth and even the solar system and eventually the milky way....ohhh that sounds so exciting |
It's not how far we need to go, but it's how fast we need to get there. We have to catch up with the light that was reflected off of the earth 60 years ago, so if we can instantaneously move from here to 60 lightyears away, we would catch up with that light.
Of course though, nothing humans know of would be able to detect such small differences. We can barely find entire planets many times bigger than Jupiter outside of our solar system. Focusing on something as small as the earth from 60 lightyears away would be impossible with our current technology.
| Quote: | | I wanted to know about small particles about what they are made of. Like they say an atom is mostly empty space. Like as big as an auditorium but i'm talking in relative scale. Then they talk about how atoms and their electrons are not really organized in order like with the little circles they draw on the pictures but actually they move randomly. Also they talk about smaller particles that form electrons, protons and neutrons. These is the stuffs i'd like to know about. |
Yes, atoms are mostly empty space. Go here: http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99394.htm
for a pretty good description.
You're right, electrons don't follow circular orbits around their nucleus, they follow random orbits around the nucleus. The shells that you see in your chemistry class represent the how far the electrons from that shell can travel. For example, the first shell holds 2 electrons, and the second shell holds 8 (if my memory serves me correctly). The two electrons in the first shell can be anywhere within the first shell, and 8 electrons can be anywhere in the first OR the second shell.
Smaller than protons neutrons and electrons are many very tiny particles.
Quarks, which you may have heard of, are in neutrons and protons. They each have 3 quarks, I believe protons have something called 2 "up" quarks and 1 "down" quark. Neutrons have 1 "up" quark and 2 "down" quarks. Don't quote me on that because I'm not entirely sure if that's right.
Neutrinos are tiny little particles that penetrate almost anything, because they are going so fast and they are so small. They go through the entire Earth, you, me, the oceans, planets, asteriods...anything at all. By the time I finish writing this post, billions of neutrinos will have passed through me.
There are more particles, I'm sure, but I don't really know of any off the top of my head, and like I said...once you get into these incredibly small particles...science gets hard, complex and confusing.
|
|
|
webtaz99
Commodore
Joined: 13 Nov 2003
Posts: 1229
Location: The Other Side
|
| Thu Mar 11, 2004 10:18 pm |
|
[quote="EnsignParis"]
Of course though, nothing humans know of would be able to detect such small differences. We can barely find entire planets many times bigger than Jupiter outside of our solar system. Focusing on something as small as the earth from 60 lightyears away would be impossible with our current technology.
[quote]
Not quite true. The ability to detect Earth-sized objects at 60 lightyears is not limited by current technology; it is limited by money. By using very large arrays and long-baseline interferometry current technology could (and soon will) both image and spectrograph planets of other stellar systems.
-------signature-------
"History is made at night! Character is who you are in the dark." (Lord John Whorfin)
|
|
|
Kyre
Commodore
Joined: 15 Mar 2002
Posts: 1263
|
| Thu Mar 11, 2004 10:29 pm |
|
| EnsignParis wrote: | | it's simple math really. |
Nice oxymoron.
Aliens: Yay or nay?
|
|
|
Gladiator
Lieutenant, Junior Grade
Joined: 07 Mar 2004
Posts: 132
Location: Elysium
|
| Thu Mar 11, 2004 11:27 pm |
|
[quote="EnsignParis"][quote="Gladiator"] | EnsignParis wrote: | Neutrinos are tiny little particles that penetrate almost anything, because they are going so fast and they are so small. They go through the entire Earth, you, me, the oceans, planets, asteriods...anything at all. By the time I finish writing this post, billions of neutrinos will have passed through me.
|
i had heard the name neutrino but i didn't know they went through us. Do they have any effect on us like radiation ?
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Fri Mar 12, 2004 10:45 am |
|
[quote="Gladiator"][quote="EnsignParis"] | Gladiator wrote: | | EnsignParis wrote: | Neutrinos are tiny little particles that penetrate almost anything, because they are going so fast and they are so small. They go through the entire Earth, you, me, the oceans, planets, asteriods...anything at all. By the time I finish writing this post, billions of neutrinos will have passed through me.
|
i had heard the name neutrino but i didn't know they went through us. Do they have any effect on us like radiation ? |
If they affected us like gamma radiation did, we would all be dead.
So, no, they don't cause any harmful effects. They go through everyone.
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Fri Mar 12, 2004 6:28 pm |
|
| Kyre wrote: | | EnsignParis wrote: | | it's simple math really. |
Aliens: Yay or nay? |
No one can be sure if there is life outside of our home planet, but I'd be willing to bet money that there is.
Lets say that there are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Let's say that 10% of those stars have planets (we have found planets in other systems, but last I knew they were no where near hospitable for humans..like gas giants closer in orbit to their sun than Mercury with 4-7 day revolutionary periods.). If 10% of 100 billion stars have planets, then we have 10 billion stars with planets. Let's say that 10% of all stars that have planets have rocky planets (like mercury, venus, earth, mars and pluto...if you consider pluto a planet), then you have 1 billion stars with rocky planets. Lets say that 1% of these planets have atmospheres, then we have 10 million planets with atmospheres. Lets say that .1% of these planets have Earth-like atmospheres with Earth-like conditions, we still have 10000 planets similar to our own in this galaxy alone.
Remember, that's just the Milky Way galaxy, there are billions more galaxies in the universe.
So you can obviously see that the odds are pretty good for life to be out there, and not just here on earth, but the chances of finding that life are not so good. 10000 stars out of the 100 billion...in other words 00.00001% (100 millionth) of stars have earth like planets orbiting them.
Note: I just made up all of these figures, so they probably aren't accurate. I'm just illustrating that the probablility of life on other planets isn't so small.
|
|
|
Dax Orien
Helmsman
Joined: 24 Aug 2001
Posts: 856
Location: My own little hell.
|
| Tue Mar 23, 2004 8:44 am |
|
Alright, alright, I have a serious question: I haven't heard much on this but are we the only solar system with Terran planets? I mean, are we the only solid planet solar system?
-------signature-------
"Let's all sing the 'Doom Song'!" ~~~ Gir
"Gir, it's been nice working with you, now self-destruct."
"FINALLY!"
Conversation between Zim and Gir in the episode entitled "Dibs Wonderful Life"
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Fri Mar 26, 2004 9:02 pm |
|
| Dax Orien wrote: | | Alright, alright, I have a serious question: I haven't heard much on this but are we the only solar system with Terran planets? I mean, are we the only solid planet solar system? |
Highly doubtful. We never actually see planets that we detect, instead we look at a wobbling movement of a star, caused by the gravitational pull of the planet when revolving the star. Most of the planets we have found are gas giants orbiting closely to the star (which is odd, since all the gas giants in our solar system are far out...there is a theory on why this happens, but I'm not going to get into it), and since it is close to the star, and they are so massive (some many times the size of Jupiter) the wobble is easier to detect (I'm guessing) since (again, I'm guessing) the gravitational pull is greater.
|
|
|
Monkey
Captain
Joined: 05 Feb 2004
Posts: 833
Location: On a quest you probably wouldn't believe.
|
| Wed Mar 31, 2004 7:27 am |
|
come on i learned this stuff in the second grade it's not that amazing
-------signature-------
"Maybe I should get myself fired."
Millennium Actress
|
|
|
EnsignParis
Lieutenant Commander
Joined: 07 Sep 2001
Posts: 257
|
| Wed Mar 31, 2004 12:44 pm |
|
Yeah? Well I didn't.
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2002 phpBB Group
Star Trek �, in all its various forms, are trademarks & copyrights of Paramount Pictures
This site has no official connection with Star Trek or Paramount Pictures
Site content/Site design elements owned by Morphy and is meant to only be an archive/Tribute to STV.com
|
Search
FAQ
Log in
