The Enlightening Science Thread

Have a go at the Drake Equation

BBC - Future - Science & Environment - Drake equation: How many alien civilizations exist?

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Have a listen to the birth of the Universe......

The Sound of the Big Bang

Golden said:

Have a listen to the birth of the Universe......

The Sound of the Big Bang

Hum interesting I always was under the impression it was that "white" noise one gets when the TV is out of tune??

Personally I think most of these PHd astronomers have there conclusions off. The big bang sound is a representation of radio frequencies which have been traveling for millennia getting distorted, reflected, bounced around, and then converted to one guy's idea of the sound. Sound is vibrations in the air that when it reacts with one's eardrum, the brain coverts it to something audible. Therefore the big bang made no sound because, one, no air to vibrate and two, no eardrums around to receive.

How do we know without a doubt some rock found in Antarctica came from Mars? If an alien took a rock from Australia and compared it too one from Arizona he may conclude they came from different planets altogether. The robotically analyzed samples are just a few ounces of Martian soil and not representative of the whole planet.

How does Hubble let them see "farther back in time"? All light we can see, by whatever means, has got here at the same time, right? If it was 10 billion years ago maybe new things would seem to appear. Peering out farther doesn't make light visible until it reached the observer, it doesn't bring it faster, just magnifies it.

There's more but I'll bring some up again.

Britton30 said:

How does Hubble let them see "farther back in time"? All light we can see, by whatever means, has got here at the same time, right? If it was 10 billion years ago maybe new things would seem to appear. Peering out farther doesn't make light visible until it reached the observer, it doesn't bring it faster, just magnifies it.

There's more but I'll bring some up again.

Ahhh, "got here at the same time". That's the point, the light hasn't "got here" yet. The Hubble can see it long before Earthlings will with the naked eye. It will "apparently" take a long time before the light reaches Earth, even at light speed. That's the way I always saw it anyway. A Guy

NASA Curiosity rover blasts Mars rock with laser 100 times

We’ve seen NASA‘s Mars Curiosity rover bore into Martian rock with a small drill multiple times, but the robot has just taken things to the next level: lasers. Specifically, the rover got to bore a small hole into Martian rock by blasting it with a laser repeatedly, causing a hole a few millimeters in diameter, which you can see after the jump.

Source

A Guy

Personally I do not believe there was a big bang it relies on all matter being in one spot before hand and that to me is ridiculous.

The sound of the universe is not sound waves as such but the electro magnetic radiation in the form of different frequencies bing jumbled together and it is only "audible" to us because of the equipment - like radios that convert that energy into audible sound via radio to audio circuitry so yes

Gary you are right there are no sound waves as such just a decyphering / decoding for want of a better description of that radiation by the equipment the same as a TV signal is "interpreted" by your TV set into a picture and sound or indeed the reflected light within your optical drive being transformed into instructions for say installing the 7 OS.

We live in a sea of EMR of countless frequencies did we but realise it

A Guy said:

Ahhh, "got here at the same time". That's the point, the light hasn't "got here" yet. The Hubble can see it long before Earthlings will with the naked eye. It will "apparently" take a long time before the light reaches Earth, even at light speed. That's the way I always saw it anyway. A Guy

Correct - the speed of light is finite. Thus the light emitted by an object that is further away from us than another light-emitting object, will take longer to reach us. Since interstellar distances are so large relative to the speed of light, looking at very distant objects is looking back in time since the light takes so long to reach us. You experience this every day : the Sun is 150,000,000 km distant from Earth and the speed of light is 300,00 km per second. Thus, 150,000,000 / 300,000 = 500 seconds or 500 / 60 = 8 minute. It takes 8 minutes for light emitted by the Sun to reach Earth.

Yes...that is correct : every time you gaze toward the Sun, you are looking back in time by 8 minutes. Now extend that idea to objects whose distance from us is measured in 100,000's light years. The scale of the Universe is truly staggering!