So I promised a story last time and as I took a brief restroom break from my homework, I chanced to read in the magazine Astronomy a brief article regarding "dark flow." Dark flow is a term coined by a researcher whose team discovered something I think is one of the coolest things ever. Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at the Goddard Space Flight Center, and his team discovered that at least 700 massive galaxy clusters (a large number of galaxies relatively close together) are all moving as groups towards a single point in the sky!
Let me use a different example in case you didn't follow that. Imagine if 700 million people on Earth were all inexplicably pulled 20ft towards the Space Needle here in Seattle. It's something like that, only they keep moving. Can you imagine how crazy this is? At least 700 individual galactic clusters are all moving towards one point! It's hypothesized that there is a concentration of mass beyond the observable universe that is exercising a force on these clusters. It's rather beyond me the size of this mass you would have to have to be able to do all this. My mind is blown.
Kashlinsky named this phenomenon dark flow to reference dark energy and dark matter, two other great mysteries. Obviously of course, there is much research to do still and this might be a ginourmous coincidence. So, don't quote me. I just wanted to share an article.
Source: Astronomy January 2009 p.31
January 18, 2009
January 2, 2009
Sed-a-give!!
Welcome everyone. I hate writing 9's so this year is already tainted. So it goes.
School is starting on Monday. Have I even purchased my books? No. Have I been keeping up with my studying? No. Am I totally doomed? Quite possibly. But I'm not worrying about it because it will work itself out. I need to take it easy while I still can. This quarter is gonna be hard. I'm taking two upper math classes, an astro computing class, and the second astro 300 level class on galaxies, of which I have no clue what things we'll learn there. Also, I'm continuing my research project on asteroids and will be devoting a minimum of three hours a week to that along with my orchestra commitments on Saturday. It's a good thing I'm getting up at 6 already.
Wow, but did you really want to know all that? Probably not but that's what a blog is for: to tell you all these wonderful things about me. Me me me. I feel so soiled right now with my presumtuous arrogance. I apologize. I will now entertain you with a story so you feel better about the time you've spent reading here.
...........um.........
How about I promise to tell a story next time? I can't think of one right now. I promise it'll be fantastic.
School is starting on Monday. Have I even purchased my books? No. Have I been keeping up with my studying? No. Am I totally doomed? Quite possibly. But I'm not worrying about it because it will work itself out. I need to take it easy while I still can. This quarter is gonna be hard. I'm taking two upper math classes, an astro computing class, and the second astro 300 level class on galaxies, of which I have no clue what things we'll learn there. Also, I'm continuing my research project on asteroids and will be devoting a minimum of three hours a week to that along with my orchestra commitments on Saturday. It's a good thing I'm getting up at 6 already.
Wow, but did you really want to know all that? Probably not but that's what a blog is for: to tell you all these wonderful things about me. Me me me. I feel so soiled right now with my presumtuous arrogance. I apologize. I will now entertain you with a story so you feel better about the time you've spent reading here.
...........um.........
How about I promise to tell a story next time? I can't think of one right now. I promise it'll be fantastic.
December 6, 2008
Time Travel
So, about 12 hours ago, I saw a cool t-shirt online that was about Back to the Future. About 15 minutes ago that t-shirt popped back up into my mind spurring a random string of thoughts that I'd like to share. Now, for your pleasure, is a glimpse into how Brian's mind works when he is driving alone, thinking.
"that was a pretty cool t-shirt earlier. i really want to buy it cause i would wear it for sure. 88 mph sure is fast. the future. hmmmmm. the future.
you know, i've always thought about travel through time as a motion when really, just because relativity involves moving at the speed of light, it doesn't mean travel through time has to involve motion in the original 3 dimensions. hmmmmmm. That would mean that Wells' The Time Machine had it closer than Back to the Future i think. still. i don't think travel to the past is possible, but if you could unsync yourself from normal time, you could bypass a large chunk of time. but you'd have to somehow uncouple the interior of your 'time bubble' as well, otherwise you would experience the passage of time. argh!
let's see, somehow your time bubble would have to be 'moving' at relativistic speeds unless some hitherto unknown process could accelerate time around an object. hmmmm.
how fast can superman go? i saw an episode of the Batman Superman Adventures that had the flash melt himself out of ice by vibrating his body so fast the friction melted it. superman of course had heat vision. but still, if the flash and superman were racing and nobody was winning, that must mean superman can go pretty darn fast. if so, then could he (or the flash) vibrate so fast in place that they begin to 'move' at relativistic speeds and bypass time? this is where my idea of travel to the past as illogical comes from. one can only bypass time, not go back. at least that's how i see it......"
Blah, blah. So you see, those are the paths my mind takes. What you didn't see is that during all this I was being even more elaborate, singing along with a song, thinking about an intense dream I had last night, playing a movie clip of all my thoughts as they cued in my head, and pondering my dinner selection tonight. Not to mention driving. Cue discussion about time travel if you like.
"that was a pretty cool t-shirt earlier. i really want to buy it cause i would wear it for sure. 88 mph sure is fast. the future. hmmmmm. the future.
you know, i've always thought about travel through time as a motion when really, just because relativity involves moving at the speed of light, it doesn't mean travel through time has to involve motion in the original 3 dimensions. hmmmmmm. That would mean that Wells' The Time Machine had it closer than Back to the Future i think. still. i don't think travel to the past is possible, but if you could unsync yourself from normal time, you could bypass a large chunk of time. but you'd have to somehow uncouple the interior of your 'time bubble' as well, otherwise you would experience the passage of time. argh!
let's see, somehow your time bubble would have to be 'moving' at relativistic speeds unless some hitherto unknown process could accelerate time around an object. hmmmm.
how fast can superman go? i saw an episode of the Batman Superman Adventures that had the flash melt himself out of ice by vibrating his body so fast the friction melted it. superman of course had heat vision. but still, if the flash and superman were racing and nobody was winning, that must mean superman can go pretty darn fast. if so, then could he (or the flash) vibrate so fast in place that they begin to 'move' at relativistic speeds and bypass time? this is where my idea of travel to the past as illogical comes from. one can only bypass time, not go back. at least that's how i see it......"
Blah, blah. So you see, those are the paths my mind takes. What you didn't see is that during all this I was being even more elaborate, singing along with a song, thinking about an intense dream I had last night, playing a movie clip of all my thoughts as they cued in my head, and pondering my dinner selection tonight. Not to mention driving. Cue discussion about time travel if you like.
November 6, 2008
A Little Blue...
I am so upset! There are only so many authors out there that I would purchase their book regardless of knowing what the book is about. Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K Dick, C.S. Lewis, George Orwell, Richard Feynman, and Michael Crichton to name probably all of them. Sadly, I just read an article that said Michael Crichton had passed away. Oh my gosh! I had a dream of meeting him sometime in my life and now that dream is shattered. He was/is in my top three favorite authors. I must have read Jurassic Park 10 times in 4 or 5 years, I loved it that much. I’ve read all of his books except for his latest one, Next. Most I’ve read more than 3 times. Timeline is incredible and I remember getting Prey for Christmas and reading it that night. I can remember the first time I read the Great Train Robbery and Andromeda Strain. I remember where I was when I was reading Lost World and Terminal Man. And who could forget Congo even though I hate monkeys? Argh! I’m gonna miss you Crichton.
October 31, 2008
Anticipation
So to make a long story short yet concise yet full-of-all-that-you-would-need-to-know, I am preparing my skill set to partake in analyzing data for a post doc at the UW. What? Well to undergrads like myself they call that research. Cool, huh? I have to say I'm very nervous yet excited. I know that research is an important part of being an undergrad and grad in the sciences so I've been wondering how I was going to get started. Imagine my shock when all I had to do was talk to our (the Astronomy Dept.) friendly program advisor who then took me over to the faculty member with the work to be done! Whew!
What skill set am I preparing you ask? Well, I'm a Windows guy. I like PC's. To use the current cliche, I'm a PC. What I don't know very well are any things that use command lines and stuff that's behind the scenes without a friendly desktop and mouse to help me around. The data I'll be needing are accessible by Linux or programs similar to Linux (which is similar to Unix [you got me on what that is]). This faculty member, whose name is Lynne, got me a link to a crash course in Linux and I'm studying it like a fiend, trying to get good at it so I can start this project.
And the project is, you ask? Well Lynne was taking optical (visible light) data of a patch of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and at nearly the same time, the Spitzer Space Telescope was taking an infrared (measures the heat of an object) picture of the same batch of asteroids. Now if you have either optical or infrared data on an object like an asteroid, it's difficult (not sure if its impossible) to determine its size. But, by combining both, you can determine the albedo, a measure of the reflectivity of the object and from that you can determine size. What you do with the info after that is ... up to someone else at this point I think.
There is my news for the week. That and I've been sick with a cold. I also just finished my math physics homework which was more tedious than anything I've done in about 4 months, which was when I had to move.
What skill set am I preparing you ask? Well, I'm a Windows guy. I like PC's. To use the current cliche, I'm a PC. What I don't know very well are any things that use command lines and stuff that's behind the scenes without a friendly desktop and mouse to help me around. The data I'll be needing are accessible by Linux or programs similar to Linux (which is similar to Unix [you got me on what that is]). This faculty member, whose name is Lynne, got me a link to a crash course in Linux and I'm studying it like a fiend, trying to get good at it so I can start this project.
And the project is, you ask? Well Lynne was taking optical (visible light) data of a patch of asteroids in the Asteroid Belt and at nearly the same time, the Spitzer Space Telescope was taking an infrared (measures the heat of an object) picture of the same batch of asteroids. Now if you have either optical or infrared data on an object like an asteroid, it's difficult (not sure if its impossible) to determine its size. But, by combining both, you can determine the albedo, a measure of the reflectivity of the object and from that you can determine size. What you do with the info after that is ... up to someone else at this point I think.
There is my news for the week. That and I've been sick with a cold. I also just finished my math physics homework which was more tedious than anything I've done in about 4 months, which was when I had to move.
October 15, 2008
3.3 Microseconds
It's a full moon. I've started listening to Christmas music. I'm freeing up space on my computer. And this is my 60th blog (but technically my 59th posted blog). It seems only fitting I discuss an interesting matter that has been muddling around in the back and front and sides of my head (nooks and crannies are free of this thought).
Take a moment and consider light. Go on................ It has a velocity: 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (or verbally, three hundred million meters per second). That's pretty stinking fast you say. Duh, I know, I'm an astrophysicist (in training). Anyway. Now consider what light does for us. It illuminates things. Everything you can see with your eyes is because light is reflecting off of it. Shocking! If it were not for light bouncing off things, we would not see them, unless the object itself was a source of illumination. Now, put these two ideas together. Velocity and that things we see are because of light. We are constantly seeing the past.
Yes, we are always seeing the past. Never the now. A little meta-exi-physi-stensial for you? Well, I'm only putting it how I heard it and then thought about it. Light takes time to travel from an object to our eye. Thus, unless the object is in your eye, you are experiencing it as it was in the past (and we won't discuss neuron sensory path time). There is no now when it comes to visual stimuli. It's easy to say light from a star took 100 million years to get here because it's 100 million light-years away, but it's not something people think about when they look at a train coming at them from say....1 kilometer away. Do you know how long it took that light from the train to get to you? It's Math Time (insert intro credits to favorite TV show here).
Distance = velocity x time so t = D/v or t= (1000m)/(3 x 10^8 m/s)
t= .0000033 seconds
AHHHH! That train could have exploded and you wouldn't know it for 3.3 micro seconds!!!
So, cue a discussion if you like. Perhaps others are so adamant about the absurdity of my statement that an answer to life, the universe, and everything will come out of discusssion.
P.S. As an aside, or I guess more accurately a post script, I would like to point out the distance from the Sun to the Earth is 1.49 x 10^11 meters, which is 149 billion meters. Couple that with light speed and the Sun could explode and we wouldn't have a gorram clue for 8 minutes. Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
Take a moment and consider light. Go on................ It has a velocity: 3.0 x 10^8 m/s (or verbally, three hundred million meters per second). That's pretty stinking fast you say. Duh, I know, I'm an astrophysicist (in training). Anyway. Now consider what light does for us. It illuminates things. Everything you can see with your eyes is because light is reflecting off of it. Shocking! If it were not for light bouncing off things, we would not see them, unless the object itself was a source of illumination. Now, put these two ideas together. Velocity and that things we see are because of light. We are constantly seeing the past.
Yes, we are always seeing the past. Never the now. A little meta-exi-physi-stensial for you? Well, I'm only putting it how I heard it and then thought about it. Light takes time to travel from an object to our eye. Thus, unless the object is in your eye, you are experiencing it as it was in the past (and we won't discuss neuron sensory path time). There is no now when it comes to visual stimuli. It's easy to say light from a star took 100 million years to get here because it's 100 million light-years away, but it's not something people think about when they look at a train coming at them from say....1 kilometer away. Do you know how long it took that light from the train to get to you? It's Math Time (insert intro credits to favorite TV show here).
Distance = velocity x time so t = D/v or t= (1000m)/(3 x 10^8 m/s)
t= .0000033 seconds
AHHHH! That train could have exploded and you wouldn't know it for 3.3 micro seconds!!!
So, cue a discussion if you like. Perhaps others are so adamant about the absurdity of my statement that an answer to life, the universe, and everything will come out of discusssion.
P.S. As an aside, or I guess more accurately a post script, I would like to point out the distance from the Sun to the Earth is 1.49 x 10^11 meters, which is 149 billion meters. Couple that with light speed and the Sun could explode and we wouldn't have a gorram clue for 8 minutes. Makes me chuckle just thinking about it.
October 9, 2008
Stupid Irony
Just a quick little blurb about something I found on the internet. Yes, I know, I've succumbed to sharing things on a blog that I found while surfing. Well, this deserves it. Check it out if you want because it is really short. Here is the skinny. Some clock in New York City has been showing a running total of the national debt since 1989. The debt is now too large for the clock to properly show. What are we doing about it? We're getting a frakkin' new clock! Why in the name of all good and sensible things would we pay for a (no doubt cool looking, digital, fancy, atomic, large, very pricey for something so dumb, and pointless) new clock??!! Who cares? It's going to be ready in a year. Can you think of how much a clock thing that takes a year to build would cost? Even if it was ten dollars, I'd say, screw the clock and go buy that homeless man down the street a new sweater. I can't believe this country. Do you see the irony?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)