the universe: okay, you’re a human. I gave you free will and a conscious mind, so you’re free to do whatever you want. So what do you wanna do?
human: GO FAST
the universe: well, you’re a perfect pursuit predator but if that’s the way you want to evolve, go ahead.
human, climbing on a horse: GO FAST
the universe: wait what
human, inventing the carriage, the car and the bullet train: GO FASTER
the universe: I IMPLORE YOU TO STOP
human, trying to figure out lightspeed travel: FAS T ER
human:
THEORETICALLY MAXIMUM FAST
the universe:
How will the people in the ship not get gibbed?
Because the warp drive doesn’t actually accelerate the ship, it just makes the space in front of it smaller and the space behind it larger. Or something.
it works like this
Objects cannot accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive shifts space around an object so that the object would arrive at its destination faster than light would in normal space without breaking any physical laws.
A WRINKLE IN TIME IS COMING TRUE
We gonna be surfing gravity waves!!
COWABUNGA SPACE DUDES!
I love how mankind’s solution to ftl is just to bend to rules of reality a little.
Universe: ok human, with the physical laws as they are you can’t go faster than the speed of light.
Humanity: ok, let me just figure out how to manipulate space time so I can go FASTER!
Fun story: One of the first things I was taught as an astronomy student is that, if you want to be a dick to someone giving a presentation, ask them “and how do the magnetic fields play into this?” and they will invariably say “fuck you I don’t know” because no one understands magnetic fields they are black magic.
Pure utter bullshit. Electromagnetic forces somehow outstrip gravitic forces in strength by an obscene factor, for no reason I can comprehend and it bothers me.
I love magnets
One, that gif showing the Curie temperature is really cool.
Two, you don’t understand, magnetic fields are the bane of my existance and I have a masters dissertation about them. I studied how magnetic fields develop in low mass stars and every single meeting with my supervisor ended in some conversation about how stupid magnetism is.
“Oh yeah and this is effected by the magnetic field strength…”
“But why?”
“God knows, I don’t have a clue.”
Was literally said to me by a professor who has spent 20 years of his life looking at magnetism in stars.
ALSO:
“Don’t ask why, we don’t know. Maybe magnetism? Who knows anything about magnetism.” – My Stellar Physics professor when asked about certain processes in stellar formation, something he has been studying for 10 years.
Like we know so little about that it’s actually funny.
Kinda puts that one Insane Clown Posse quote into new context.
Send me to Mars with party supplies before next august 5th
No guys you don’t understand.
The soil testing equipment on Curiosity makes a buzzing noise and the pitch of the noise changes depending on what part of an experiment Curiosity is performing, this is the way Curiosity sings to itself.
So some of the finest minds currently alive decided to take incredibly expensive important scientific equipment and mess with it until they worked out how to move in just the right way to sing Happy Birthday, then someone made a cake on Curiosity’s birthday and took it into Mission control so that a room full of brilliant scientists and engineers could throw a birthday party for a non-autonomous robot 225 million kilometres away and listen to it sing the first ever song sung on Mars*, which was Happy Birthday.
This isn’t a sad story, this a happy story about the ridiculousness of humans and the way we love things. We built a little robot and called it Curiosity and flung it into the star to go and explore places we can’t get to because it’s name is in our nature and then just because we could, we taught it how to sing.
That’s not sad, that’s awesome.
*this is different from the first song ever played on mars (Reach For The Stars by Will.I.Am) which happened the year before, singing is different from playing
I’m pretty sure that the reason the ice fractured into six slices is the same reason snowflakes are often six sided and it has to do with the shape of a molecule of water and I just think that’s so freaking cool.
How would it even stay lit though?
!!!!! it IS actually because of the structure of water molecules! Water molecules are fuckin weird, as are lots of other liquid substance molecules, because theyre shaped like fuckin HEXAGONS! hexagons are those weird, six-sided shapes that re very sturdy, but they dont tend to sit very well when stacked together. thats why, when you fill up a glass of water to its full capacity, it can go OVER the brim a little and not spill over. It’s also why water beads.
anyway, so since water is essentially made up of a gazillion little hexagons, it tends to gather into larger hexagons as it shapes together. this is not visible unless the water is in a solid form, aka ice. when the water is split, it tends to crack around the established hexagons. that bottle rocket exploded in the PERFECT place to show this phenomenon and its geeking me out.
ALSO! the bottle rocket stays lit because the fuse was definitely waterproof and made with magnesium and an oxidizer of some sort. this means that they will burn underwater because they dont need the oxygen from the air to stay lit. thats so fucking weird isnt it. im tipsy and its the 4th of july. sorry for the science haha
Remember the last time the FCC nearly killed net neutrality?
Tumblr had this nice big banner at the top of your dashboard alerting any active user about the problem. Guess what has changed since then? Verizon, one of the companies gunning for the death of net neutrality owns yahoo who in turn own Tumblr. Spread the word, tell everyone you can: battleforthenet.com tag posts you see about net neutrality with popular tags so the news spreads.
Scientists invented fabric that makes
electricity from motion and sunlight.
To create the fabric, researchers at
Georgia Tech wove together solar
cell fibers with materials that generate
power from movement. It could be
used in “tents, curtains, or wearable
garments,” meaning we’d virtually
never be without power. Source
Y’all are fucking idiots. Clean energy will NEVER be enough to replace the energy we have now. We’d have to tear down DOZENS of forests just to fit enough windmills and solar panels to get even a QUARTER (probably less, tbh) of the energy we can produce now.
Yeah, sure, when they’ve already calculated that a few square miles of panels in the empty ass Arizona desert could power the whole nation. But ok, fracking and the diminishing petroleum supply is worlds better.
Nevermind that windmills are often most efficient off the coast. There they take up no land, impact no trees, don’t pollute the water, and are conveniently located where winds are often strongest anyway.
And solar panels can literally be built into roofs of buildings and in empty areas like deserts. The sun strikes the Earth with the same amount of energy in an hour that our civilization uses in a year.
But yeah, it would be impossible for us to ever have enough energy from clean sources.
Durr hurr technology is bad and I would rather light shit on fire than have clean energy
I can also testify to the Arizona desert being empty ass. And the California desert. And the Nevada desert.
The fact that anyone can believe a limited amount of dinosaur oil is more plentiful and efficient than moving air or fucking sunlight is proof that entire populations can be completely brainwashed.
“Most people don’t know frost comes in several varieties.
Hoarfrost forms on the ground.
Wind frost forms on plants like flowers.
Soul frost forms in the mind, a wistful daydream spread through fleeting glances.
Dire frost forms on stars, absorbing their heat until the light dies.”
-QuietPineTrees
Twitter has doubled the character limit for posts.
andtheytoldustotellyouhello 