Frances144 Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Space is big. Really 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. Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hector's House Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i] Hasn't there just been a report that some scientists have seen what might be the signs that the Universe is actually just a huge computer simulation? Presumably running on someone's laptop Life imitating Art? Perhaps DA knew too much... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hairyian Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[/i] Hasn't there just been a report that some scientists have seen what might be the signs that the Universe is actually just a huge computer simulation? Presumably running on someone's laptop Life imitating Art? Perhaps DA knew too much... So all this nonsense about planets flying round suns is finally unproven.What happens 'at night' is da alien closes his laptop lid down ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KOYAANISQATSI Posted October 23, 2012 Report Share Posted October 23, 2012 Nobel laureate Hannes Alfvén's view was that plasma played an important role in the universe. He asserted that electromagnetic forces are far more important than gravity when acting on interplanetary and interstellar charged particles.Alfvén's worked to scale plasma theory from the laboratory to the magnetosphere. Alfvén wrote a paper in 1939, supporting the theory of Kristian Birkeland, who had written in 1913 that what is now called the Solar wind generated currents in space that caused the aurora.Birkeland's theory was disputed at the time and Alfvén's work in turn was disputed for many years by the British geophysicist and mathematician Sydney Chapman, a senior figure in space physics, who argued the mainstream view that currents could not cross the vacuum of space and therefore the currents had to be generated by the Earth.But eventually in 1967 Birkeland's then fringe theory was proved to be correct after a probe was sent into space, and these magnetic field aligned currents are now named Birkeland currents in his honour. Same old story. Math man speak with forked tongue! Plasma cosmology's central idea is that the dynamics of plasmas plays a decisive role in the physics of the universe at scales larger than the Solar system.Today, almost all cosmologists and astronomers are dismissive of the idea. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_cosmology Throughout the universe more than 99 percent of matter looks nothing like what's on Earth. Most of the universe is governed by rules that react more obviously to such things as magnetic force or electrical charge.This material that pervades the universe, making up the stars and our sun, and also – far less densely, of course – the vast interstellar spaces in between, is called plasma.Understanding this mysterious world of plasma, however, is not easy. With its complex rules of motion, the study of plasmas is rife with minute details to be teased out.--------Understanding the mechanics behind all these events requires collating and categorizing an entire zoo of waves and processes. Wilson's work may be but one piece of a larger puzzle, but together, teasing out the motions of plasmas will help scientists describe the laws of motion that govern the entire universe http://phys.org/news/2012-07-heliophysics-nugget-plasma.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArabiaTerra Posted October 25, 2012 Report Share Posted October 25, 2012 Count the stars: http://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1242a/zoomable/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hector's House Posted October 26, 2012 Report Share Posted October 26, 2012 ^ Wow - that's as close as you can get to space porn! It'll make a serious screen wallpaper - almost as many lights as my current view of Hong Kong at night Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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