Out of Pod Experience

it is exactly that simple :3 heat IS light. infrared to be exact. heat is exchanged through three methods. Convection, the movement of energetic matter from one place to another. Conduction, the movement of heat through a solid body. And finally Radiation, the exchange of heat through interaction with light. the sun heats the earth through the last method, radiation.

as for the ship, i'm really not sure. the other post sounds reasonable but i haven't read anything about it.

there are two primary forces at work within a star: the force of gravity, pulling inwards, and the outward pressure created the fusion reaction occurring at the stars core. when a massive star runs out of fuel (when it has converted a large portion of its mass into iron) the fusion forces die, gravity takes over, and the star collapses. this is called core collapse. depending on the mass of the star in question, a number of things can happen. if the star is particularly massive, but NOT massive enough to form a black hole, it will probably form a neutron star: a star formed almost entirely of neutrons.

the atoms that from the star get squeezed together as the core collapses. eventually the pressure is so great, it forces all electrons outwards, to the surface of the star (like oil sitting on top of water). as the collapse continues the nuclei of the atoms are squeezed into contact with each other. protons are around .1% lighter than neutrons, so they also float towards the surface as the collapse continues. eventually, something very strange happens: a new and intriguing outward pressure begins to form. this is called Degeneracy Pressure.

neutrons are Fermions and obey something called the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that no two fermions can occupy the same quantum state. the neutrons in our star are now so close that they are trying to occupy the same state, but they can't! the exclusion principle prevents it! this stops the collapse. most of matter that floated towards the surface gets expelled away from the star and what remains is one of the most unusual objects in all the universe: a sphere only a few kilometers wide with the mass of a couple suns or so.

neutron stars have a variety of interesting properties; the most fascinating of these, in my opinion, is that you can see more of the stars surface that what is facing you. this is due to the bending of light from the intense gravity near its surface. neutron stars are also incredibly hot and carry absurd amounts of energy due to the degeneracy pressure. because of conservation of angular momentum, they also have incredible angular velocities; some rotating several hundred times per second!! this tends to squish the star into a semi flattened sphere, bulging at the equator. we see the same effect here on earth, though to a lesser extreme (the earths equatorial diameter is, on average, several kilometers larger than its polar diameter).

neutrons, while charge neutral, are composed of non neutral quarks, which gives them a magnetic moment (no electric moment has ever been measured for the neutron). these moments fully align in the neutron star, and because of its high angular velocity the star can accelerate charged matter near its magnetic poles. this accelerated matter emits radio and x-ray radiation and because the star itself is rotating, these emissions seem to pulse. neutron stars with these characteristics are called Pulsars for this exact reason.

quark stars are the hypothetical core of very dense neutron stars. if the masses are large enough, current theories suggest that the core of the star stops behaving as individual neutrons and starts behaving like a single, n-quark hadron: a fundamental particle several meters across. i know next to nothing about these, sorry :(

No, no, no, no, no. Go sign up for the airforce, asked to be assigned to that mountain complex, take the elevator, and go as low as you could possibly go. There, you can use your knowledge of astrophysics for something greater than great.

Nah, I'm just kidding. This isn't Stargate.

Have you seen any research or are you able to comment on whether or not the bond enthalpies of a collapsing neutron star raise exponentially?


Also: Is there any artcile or topic that you can refer to in relation to a collapsing neutron star placing more dense material within a finite space than could commonly occur elsewhere? i.e. during core collapse does more matter occupy space than would normally be achievable and does this contribute to the formation of a singularity / black hole?

Fermi's paradox... what is your take on that sir?

no, i haven't / cannot. bond enthalpies are usually associated with molecules though right? most molecules can't "live" in a neutron star (or any really. it's allllllll ions)



again, don't know, but i also am not quite sure what you are asking here. neutron star matter is the densest matter we know of. the matter densities of a neutron star are far greater than what can be "normally" achieved. also, to my knowledge, neutron stars don't collapse on their own (they DO suffer from starquakes though). a star either has enough mass to form a black hole or it doesn't.

hope this helps!

another good one. i spoke on this when i was teaching astronomy labs a few years back. for those who may not be familiar, Fermi's Paradox asks...

given the size and age of the universe, why haven't we observed any signs of other intelligent life?

if we go about this logically, there are only two primary possibilities (and lots of secondary ones. either...

A) few other civilizations exist (or possibly no others at all)

or

B) they DO exist, and for one reason or another, leave no evidence.

so lets cover secondary arguments for A. the conclusions here can be somewhat depressing so i recommend listening to this to facilitate the mood.

it is possible that humanity is the FIRST civilization in the universe, and it is even possible that humanity may very well be the ONLY civilization. the latter argument comes from calculations relating to the multiverse hypothesis, which predicts that young universe outnumber old universes by absurd amounts, and so universes with civilizations will likely only have one each. another possibility is that it is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself or others... which would imply that there have been other civilizations in the universe which ended up killing each other off before we were able to listen. it is also possible that the universe is simply too hostile a place for multiple civilizations to exist; that natural events destroys intelligent life frequently enough that there are rarely multiple civilizations...

ok so, onwards to B (much less depressing). here we can probably neglect alien artifacts, as we have yet to explore even our own solar system enough to even know whether or not any exist here. this leaves communication only, which means that we are either unable to communicate for physical, technological, or personal reasons.

on the physical side of things, there may very well be consequences within special and general relativity that prevent EM communication over vast distances. the question of simultaneity definitely comes to mind here (whether or not two events are simultaneous is a common question in relativity). even more practically, it's possible that we simply have not been listening long enough. this is especially attractive if we assume that many civilizations are popping up around the same time, which would imply that the universe has only "recently" gotten to the point where long term civilizations can survive. if we go back even a few hundred thousand years, modern humanity as we know it doesn't even exist, and this is less than the merest hiccup in time on a cosmological scale. the radio has only been around for 120 years or so, and the galaxy is 100,000 to 120,000 light years across and 1,000 light years thick! in that regard our feeble cries have only just left the neighborhood.

on the technological side, it is possible that there is another, more efficient mode of communication that we have yet to discover. assuming this is true, it is possible most civilizations switch to this other method fast enough that the length of time that they are transmitting in radio waves is much much smaller than the age of the civilization. it is also possible that other life is simply too alien for us to identify their attempts at communication. it is even possible that these other civilizations are not technological at all!

the "personal" possibilities are by far the most unsettling in my opinion. they are also the most unlikely. it is possible that these civilizations do indeed exist, and they even communicate with each other, but for some reason not with US; that they are here unseen in the universe. voyager has only just recently started to leave our solar system, and is our FIRST physical probe to do so. for all we know we could be living in some giant dyne sphere of alien design, and all we have measured is just simulation. we could be a zoo of some kind or they could be harvesting energy from the sun. other life could have some kind of "prime directive" that prevents them form interacting with lesser species. their communications could be encrypted for this reason and we cannot detect them.

i personally think it's a matter of technology. that they are simply using a different, currently unknown method to communicate with each other.

nope! at best the astronaut would see it and feel it happen at the same time. more than likely astronaut would feel it much MUCH later, and this will be true for any real pole made of atoms. but why is this?

the root of this question is really "what makes solids, solid?" what keeps you from falling through your chair or your hands from passing through your keyboard? you might say that this is because no two particles of matter can occupy the same location in space at the same time, but you would be wrong (i mean, the statement is correct, but it is not the reason)! atoms are very empty things. in fact, the vast majority of matter as we know it is empty space!

the dimensions of an atom are measured in a unit called the Angstrom, which is defined as 1E-10 meters. the dimensions of a nucleus are measured in units called a femtometer, which is 1E-15 meters! this is a five orders of magnitude difference! what does this mean? well, this means that if the nucleus of your atom was about a centimeter across, the electrons would be orbiting around a kilometer away!

so if atoms are primarily empty, what keeps them from passing through each other? the FORCE! the electromagnetic force to be exact :3 the electrons in your hand are quite literally repelling the electrons in your keyboard, and it is THIS that prevents the two from passing through each other. the electromagnetic force is one of the strongest fundamental forces in the universe. contrary to intuition, gravity is actually the weakest (by several orders of magnitude), even though it holds our solar system and even our galaxy together!

so now that we are all experts in the fundamental properties of all atomic matter, why doesn't the astronaut feel the poke before he sees it? the force exerted by astronaut A travels along the pole, from atom to atom electromagnetically to astronaut B. earlier in the thread i made a post about how "action at a distance" forces are mediated by particles. as it turns out, the force mediator particle for the electromagnetic force is light (the photon)! so when an atom at one part of the pole moves, it takes at least d/c seconds for an atom adjacent to it to even KNOW about it (where d is the distance in meters and c is the speed of light in a vacuum)! different solids have different properties, like compression or tensile strengths, and this would also affect the time (specifically increase the time) it would take for astronaut B to feel the poke.

I like to have sex with girls with their consent. This gets harder the more I talk about astronauts poking at each other with very long poles.

see, i like to have sex with men with their consent, so there is no issue here ;)