Geek talk (Science/Space/Tech etc)

The Cross Bar
#41

yeah for reference,

sun is ~8 light minutes away.
closest star (Proxima Centauri) is ~4 ly away.
our galaxy is ~0.1mn ly across.
distance to closest galaxy (M31, or Andromeda) is ~2.5mn ly away.

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#42

Arghhh, how do I keep missing this crucial aspect.

Btw, what do you do oompa?

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#43

this. exactly this. theoretical astrophysics :sweat_smile:

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#44

SENSEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

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#45

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#46

What do you think of Einstein?
Dude must have been 200-300 years ahead of his time.

#47

Einstein was ridiculous. He is exactly as great as history/fame makes him out to be and imo probably even greater. It’s not easy to even understand the conceptual advancements he made. He was an absolute boss. This thing we’re doing now, such as detecting gravitational waves and the spacetime curvature etc. he figured out like a hundred years ago. There just was not equipment even remotely precise enough to measure relativistic effects on timespace to explain these concepts we just recently have proven, he himself had to run around in Africa, literally with a machete, and chase good pictures of Mercury transits (iirc) at the time to convince his peers that this was actually a thing lol

Einstein is absolutely massive. And besides his basic conceptual stuff, digging into the details of the stuff he figured out (like trying to do the tensor calculus required to play with his field equations) is in the bracket of the most difficult theoretical physics we know of. Yeah he was ahead of his time, but that’s the thing I guess, progress is not linear, it stands still for a while and then we make tiny jumps, sometimes the odd leap as with this guy.

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#48

I have been in and out of my interest in physics but that gravitational waves concept is so fucking awesome and makes so much sense.

If I wish to really dig deep right from basics, where would you recommend I start?

#49

10/10 Thread, well done chaps and chapettes!

Got a job on today and the owner was a former physicist, so have had a brilliant time talking about this today!

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#50

what do you mean with dig deep? I’d say these things are either explained conceptually in layman’s terms, and then any good youtube video will do it I think. Other than that I am sure a few books or open lectures by known talkers like Leonard Susskind or Max Tegmark or w/e (also on yt) do the job of slightly longer presentations/explanations but still without too much maths. If you want more basic than that you quickly run into the need to start communicating with maths, so then the basics would mean you’d have to actually… I guess get a degree. study pure maths for a couple of years and then take physics classes etc. etc. get the full education :sweat_smile:

#51

I have been listening to these guys lately and some of the topics are amazing.

  • How water can be different in different part of the solar system and what low odds of life forming on a planet are.
  • How it’s ironical that Mars might have had a life but lost the atmosphere but Earth then got an atmosphere and life developed here. It’s a fascinating podcast that
  • What really happens to a human body in space
#52

This.
Once I am a bit settled in life and don’t need to worry too much about bills, I wanna pursue masters in mathematics and if I desire to study more, pursue physics.

#53

Yeah if you are still in India I’m sure you know you guys have an amazing and well respected tradition of providing absolute top level education to physicists and mathematicians (and probably a bunch of other things as well). Do it if you still feel like it at that point in time. also that pod you linked seems great. Those kinds of pods or open lectures etc. I think are phenomenal. Especially when it is people on CERN or w/e doing them, you know you’re getting the right explanations.

#54

Not going to lie, this guy is someone I only come across recently. I am currently a few pages into his book Life 3.0 which so far is really well written.

Quick lesson for those, if you don’t want to pursue maths or physics - do philosophy!

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#55

I didn’t know that :eyes:

Anyway, back to the thread. Will PM you some day regarding this

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#56

Much like a rocket, I’m pleased how well this thread has taken off. Was worth giving it’s own thread after all, eh @Trion :slight_smile:

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#57

Yeah let’s cram it up with amazing Universe related stuffs

#58

Yeah he is from my city and started out at my Uni (well, technically at the engineering school nearby) and still pops back now and then for open lectures. I agree he is pretty philosophical about things. I went to an open talk about his then latest book called A Mathematical Universe a few years ago, expecting him to talk about his book for an hour, but it was like one minute about his book and the rest was about how important it is that we are morally more advanced than we are technologically advanced and a bunch of other great stuff about morals and ethics and philosophy with AI like modern adaptations to the robot laws of Asimov etc lol

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#59
#60

yeah see that telescope used for the picture you just posted is named after Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (born in then India) because he was an absolute boss within the field of Astronomy and won the nobel prize for example :smiley:

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