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- Thread starter Zwhaler
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I heard it on the radio a few years back so I don't remember the asteroids name. But, I will try.
Here we go. 1 in a 300 chance of hitting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(29075)_1950_DA
Here is Andromeda mating with the Milky Way. Supposed to happen in 2.5 billion years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(29075)_1950_DA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(29075)_1950_DA
Here is Andromeda mating with the Milky Way. Supposed to happen in 2.5 billion years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/(29075)_1950_DA
Yeah, think of what we were capable 800 years ago... pretty much nothing except jousting. And at the rate that technology is accelerating, I have a feeling that we will occupy more places than earth in 800 years. Not to mention that if the population keeps expanding the way it does... the earth will be a very unpleasant place to live.
Well done, you win the 'by far the funniest thing I've read today' competition I just invented. Excellent.
OK, so 120x as massive... but the total volume, assuming a diameter d of 600 Sols, is r = 1/2 d = 300^3 or 27,000,000x that of Sol. Which means the net density is much, much lower, particularly in the outer layers. If you had a heat-resistant ship, you literally could fly into that star to great distances.
What you say is likely true, except perhaps "120x" more massive is after taking the huge size difference into consideration. Can someone clear this up?
If your assumption is correct, however, it would even less dense than you described, because VY Canis Majoris has a diameter of around 2000 Sols, far greater than 600. That would take a long time to fly a ship through it
Very true, but your first question centered on mass.
You are correct in that this star has a very low density, and you could probably drive a spaceship through this star, given you have a large enough pair of sunglasses. Mass is entirely independent of volume. Mass is literally "how much matter is in an object" (think of it like weight). Volume, as I'm sure you're aware is simply an object's size. The object's density is its mass/volume; therefore, any object with low mass relative to its volume (as with VY Canis Majoris), will yield a low density.
Nobody's going to be around on Earth by that stage anyway. The Solar wind is slowly removing the atmosphere, a process that should be complete in a billion years or so. We're quite lucky that our planet has a strong magnetic field that deflects most of what the Sun throws our way or it would have already have happened, or at least our atmosphere would be too thin to keep the surface temperature regular enough to support life as on Mars.
The universe is a big mother****er!
I tried to reply to someone asking what the song was and like a youtube n00b I freakin replied in the wrong spot. http://upc.*************/uploads/smilies/smilieloser.gif oh well, it's a pretty tiny mistake in the grand scheme of things.
I tried to reply to someone asking what the song was and like a youtube n00b I freakin replied in the wrong spot. http://upc.*************/uploads/smilies/smilieloser.gif oh well, it's a pretty tiny mistake in the grand scheme of things.
don't forget the other end of the scale
If it makes you feel any better, when you include the microscopic, atomic, subatomic etc. in the picture, the human body is pretty much average sized on the scale of universal sizes. If you put the biggest object known at one end and the smallest things known at the other, a six foot tall human falls just about on the half way point.
This is could be clear evidence of God's plan, or maybe just an interesting and mostly irrelevant data point.
If it makes you feel any better, when you include the microscopic, atomic, subatomic etc. in the picture, the human body is pretty much average sized on the scale of universal sizes. If you put the biggest object known at one end and the smallest things known at the other, a six foot tall human falls just about on the half way point.
This is could be clear evidence of God's plan, or maybe just an interesting and mostly irrelevant data point.
I find it hard to believe that the biggest thing in the universe is twelve feet tall.
Anyone with a SF bent and an interest in a long-term view of things should read some of the novels by Alastair Reynolds - basically his premise is that humanity has colonised the stars but at slower-than-light (although near-light) speeds, which means that some of the events he describes take place over generations (or even longer in some of his descriptions of alien cultures, e.g. wars that last millennia). An interesting alternative to the usual "hyperdrive" method of getting about the place in SF.
How's this?
smallest thing--------------human--------------biggest thing
I would guess that this claim is based on relative size vs. actual size, a multiplicative vs. additive scale. Even so, it might be nice to have actual data.
In that case, what is the size of the average object in the universe median wise? The Planck length?
This wikipedia table lists objects and distances by orders of magnitude. Your average humam is 1.7 quadrillion times larger than a proton (you could get even larger numbers if you used electrons, quarks, and, finally planck strings, but that's your choice). VY Canis Majoris is ~1.5 trillion times the size of your average human. Once again, the table lists larger items, but they would fall under the category of composites, so I ruled them out. The definition of trillion and quadrillion should be considered the American definition, not the British (trillion as 10^12, not 10^18).
So that would support the above statement, if it was meant in terms of orders of magnitude, which seems to be the only reasonable conclusion.
So that would support the above statement, if it was meant in terms of orders of magnitude, which seems to be the only reasonable conclusion.
