Comments on: Scale

By: It’s full of stars | dv8-designs

It’s full of stars | dv8-designs — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 21:43:37 +0000

[...] terrible distorted orbits), yielding some truly beautiful videos (this one found via the fantastic Bad Astronomy blog). These videos go, at most, as far as looking at the local cluster or the Virgo Supercluster. [...]

By: CCW

CCW — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:13:29 +0000

I know ‘The Black Hole’ meets with a lot of hate here, but the soundtrack is awesome.
As is the ‘Blade Runner’ theme off course. But John Barry’s opening theme to ‘the Black Hole’ just always creeps me out.

By: Perspective « Clowning a little in Vancouver

Perspective « Clowning a little in Vancouver — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:50:18 +0000

[...] us of that than one of my favorite writers and skeptics, the Bad Astronomer, Phil Plait, who posted this the other day. I love plugging fellow bloggers that I frequent so expect this sort of post [...]

By: UM

UM — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:24:45 +0000

Another perspective on scale (or height above the earth’s surface to avoid the whole centre of the universe thing): http://xkcd.com/482/

By: Stone Age Scientist

Stone Age Scientist — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 08:22:31 +0000

T.E.L. @ # 79 and Spectroscope @ #81,

Thanks for sharing knowledge.

By: kobayashi

kobayashi — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 06:34:28 +0000

Thank you RTFM! & Fraser Cain, for pointing me to the podcast. It was fascinating in parts, but nevertheless singularly unenlightening on the very question you tried to pose (repeatedly) on that episode.

To say that “it is a nonsense question” is, to me, a nonsense response. I’ve heard it from so many people that I’m beginning to doubt my sanity. From what I gather, the professional physicist’s answer is based on the assumption that:

SPACE AND TIME EXIST ONLY IN THE UNIVERSE

This is said with such axiomatic certainty that you assume it must be a hard fact… until the physicist cheerfully admits that she doesn’t even know how many universes there are (there goes the definite article in the axiom) and whether or not the universe is finite or infinite (there goes the whole darn axiom, because you can’t have a definition that excludes nothing).

In other words, the question, “what is the universe expanding into” is being labelled nonsensical based on an axiom that is at best doughnut-shaped, and at worst, nonsensical.

The extent of physicists’ ignorance of the universe is most startlingly revealed when Pamela Gay says that she isn’t quite sure whether the doughnut shape is just a mathematical model or something that we could take literally! Jeez, isn’t that precisely the kind of question that’s at issue here? The right spatial model for the universe? Schrodinger should have asked, if there was an elephant in the room, what was the probability that a professional physicist could spot it?

Let’s just admit that there’s a cognitive aporia involved in trying to comprehend the extent of the universe. Let’s please not insult people’s intelligence by calling this a nonsense question.

By: Les Toth

Les Toth — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 01:17:56 +0000

I love stuff like this, i am an astro geek from birth. But ide like to point out that on my own reference frame, my family are the centre of my universe and the biggest and most important part of it. My $0.02 on vids like this is the same as i feel about any inward preaching religion. I appreciated it up until the point where it assumed i wasn’t important.