We detect exoplanets by examining the minute variations of shine of the stars behind them. Oort Cloud comets are way too far away from any stars, including ours, to be visible.
I wonder how many large objects are flying around in interstellar space that are undetectable by our telescopes.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.It's space. It's BEYOND huge. A number of them can be both immensely big if you take it straight but also immeasurably tiny if you take it in proportion to the rest of the emptiness of interstellar.
I like this image◊ to illustrate how big space really is.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.And it severely under represents the distances on the star neighbourhood scale by making stars on it too huge.
Numbers could work better I think. Milky Way along contains 300 (+/- 100) BILLIONS of stars.
The observable universe estimate is in the magnitude of 10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 stars.
edited 7th Jul '15 3:47:16 AM by Adannor
I think that numbers this large are harder to conceive than figures, even if they are off-scale by a few orders of magnitudes. It doesn't help that "billion" means different thing in different languages.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.I prefer using this.
Fixed.
edited 7th Jul '15 6:35:01 AM by spashthebandragon
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.HGTTG. Hitchhiker, not Hitch Hiker.
They do have medals for almost, and they're called silver!Oh, no, not this again. It's often written "H2G2", which is an initialism for Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Actually, I think calling the road to the chemist's "peanuts to space" isn't being hyperbolic enough. It's more like dust mites to space. Maybe even smaller than that.
I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.I'm not sure where I saw it, but I remember seeing a to-scale representation of space somewhere on the net that did a good job of showing the utterly vast distances involved.
IIRC, the scale was that one pixel was the size of Earth, and all the planets (and Pluto) were arranged in a line. It took several minutes of scrolling just to get to Earth. It took several times that much to get from there to Pluto.
I remembered "one pixel" was in its title, and this was the third or fourth result.
Fresh-eyed movie blogOk, that is really cool. Space is big, mostly empty and rather majestic.
Wow.
The speed-of-light scrolling being infuriatingly slow really drives the point home.
Worldbuilding is fun, writing is a choreYeaaaah. At lightspeed you'd need five and a half hours to reach Pluto.
edited 7th Jul '15 12:04:46 PM by Adannor
You could get that star that takes forever in Braid twice and still have time to speedrun the rest of the game in the time it takes to get from the sun to Pluto at lightspeed.
I don't think lightspeed was part of that page when I first saw it months ago.
I think the guy also has a scale model of electron orbitals scrollapalooza.
Edit: not finding it.
edited 7th Jul '15 9:22:57 PM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogMass that we can't see with our telescopes is literally the definition of Dark Matter, and it's calculated to make up 84% of the universe. So, strictly speaking, the overwhelming majority of the universe is invisible to us.
Though most of that stuff probably isn't particularly large.
"Canada Day is over, and now begins the endless dark of the Canada Night."Wait, so... dark matter is like... rocks and shit that we just can't see?
Woah.
Oh.
edited 8th Jul '15 5:21:56 AM by Thnikkafan
Anyone who assigns themselves loads of character tropes is someone to be worried about.No, no, no. There are lots of rocks and dust and shit that we can't see because it's too small and/or it doesn't reflect enough light. That's not what dark matter is. Dark matter is literally invisible; it doesn't reflect, absorb, or radiate detectable energy. You could have fifty trillion tons of it in Earth orbit and we still couldn't see it. It can only be observed via its gravitational effect on other objects.
edited 8th Jul '15 5:21:45 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Basically we only know it exists because it has to.
Oh really when?Looks like Linkara's friend got a cameo appearance. ;)
Heaven is a tropical rainforest.Ah gravitational forces.
It begs the question.
How the fuck do atoms stay together when the difference between protons and electrons is so extreme?
Apocalypse: Dirge Of Swans.I think you're getting some of your terms confused. In magnetism, likes repel and opposites attract. Electrons and protons stick together because they have opposite charges.
The "mystery", if you can call it that, is why protons stay together in the nucleus of an atom, and the answer is the strong nuclear force. It's way more powerful than the electromagnetic force over those tiny distances, and busting it is what gives us the incredible energy released by nuclear fission and fusion.
Strength and range are inversely proportional when it comes to fundamental forces. Gravity is the weakest force but has infinite range. Electromagnetism is in the middle of the pack, and the strong nuclear force is incredibly powerful but has a tiny range.
Even with the strong nuclear force, atoms consisting of more than one proton need neutrons to glue them together in order to remain stable.
edited 8th Jul '15 7:46:47 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Huh. We can detect exoplanets but not comets at the edge of our Solar System.
The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.