Starship Asterisk*

by **M100** » Wed Dec 12, 2018 4:45 am

This is a wonderful project that truly educates concerning the sheer size of space, however, I have to take issue with the statement about floating in nothing. Dark matter, gravitational fields, cosmic rays, supernovas, galaxies, the universe. Truly not nothing.

by **MarkBour** » Fri Jan 22, 2016 5:48 pm

Nice to hear about the permanent models constructed in Alaska and Maine. It would be fun to visit these and see them.

by **ta152h0** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:44 am

lets see, one spaceship pulling an Airstream trailer for supplies, having babies on the way with all the claptrap required to raise such babies to be doctors, scientists, engineers going thru 150 lifespans being bombarded by intense radiation and quite possibly never to return info to Earthdwellers. I think having an ice cold on here is a better scenario .

by **neufer** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 5:26 am

ta152h0 wrote:
neufer wrote:
mwarri wrote:
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.
~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.
that is a lot of kilometers

And yet a banana slug could traverse that distance in ~600 years = ~150 life spans.

It would take humans ~30,000 years = ~400 life spans to get to Proxima Centauri.

"Interstellar travel" for banana slugs makes more sense, IMO.

by **Beyond** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 2:41 am

Heck, that's even a lot of miles!

by **ta152h0** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 10:43 pm

that is a lot of kilometers

by **neufer** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:57 pm

mwarri wrote:
Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.

~47,000 kilometers or about 30% further than geostationary satellites.

by **mwarri** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:20 pm

There is also a scale model at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC, with the Sun in front of the museum, and marker posts down the street toward the Washington Monument.

Question: With the Sun in the Black Rock Desert on the scale you constructed, about how far away is the nearest star? Denver? St. Louis? etc.

Thanks!

by **geckzilla** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:49 pm

Haha, it's just way too easy to make jokes of poor taste involving (fire)walls and overbearing copyright groups in Germany...

by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:44 pm

Markus Schwarz wrote:
bystander wrote:
Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany :(
Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve :bang:

Just use a proxy. These things are easily worked around.

by **Markus Schwarz** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 8:33 pm

bystander wrote:
Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany
Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

There is no technical problem but a legal issue, which is a lot more difficult to resolve

by **Ron-Astro Pharmacist** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:31 pm

neufer wrote:
geckzilla wrote:
I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...

1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.

2) E=mc²

3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

4) The four laws of thermodynamics.

5) Maxwell's equations

6)

I like this one too though not quite the same type of equation.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

I am curious if the this the makers of the video considered inclination from the plane or even how difficult showing it would be.

by **neufer** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:53 pm

geckzilla wrote:
I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it.
What model would you say is perfect already...

1) The speed of light in a vacuum is a constant.

2) E=mc²

3) Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

4) The four laws of thermodynamics.

5) Maxwell's equations

6)

by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:42 pm

geckzilla wrote:I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?

I don't know if any are (although some might be). But I don't know why a model can't perfectly represent reality. I don't see that it's something that can never be achieved.

by **geckzilla** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 6:37 pm

I thought models only approach perfection, never actually reaching it. What model would you say is perfect already, Chris?

by **Chris Peterson** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:22 pm

Visual_Astronomer wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:
Visual_Astronomer wrote:Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!
Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.
A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it.

My point was simply that if the model perfectly represents the behavior, then there is little meaning to what the behavior "really" is. All we need is the model. When discussing the Universe, "reality" isn't a useful concept, assuming it even has meaning at all.

We have few perfect models at this point, but that's a separate issue.

by **Visual_Astronomer** » Mon Dec 28, 2015 3:18 pm

Chris Peterson wrote:
Visual_Astronomer wrote:Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!
Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.

A model must be different from the thing it represents, else it would be the thing itself, not a model of it. Max Tegmark thinks the universe is made of math, but I'm not so sure.

Newton had a good model, but it got replaced by Einstein. Relativity and quantum physics do a really good job describing particular narrow slices of reality, but they aren't unified, and they don't include all the dark matter and energy. Surely some day they will be swept aside by an even more precise, all-inclusive model of the world.

by **Roadbum** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 11:38 pm

The University of Maine has done something like this. The sun is represented as an arc in a three story stairwell in the Science building on the Presque Isle campus. The rest of the planets are strung out along US Highway One down to near Houlton. The scale and the planets are to scale. Most of them can be seen along the highway, though one has to know where to look and to pay attention.

by **bystander** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 3:51 pm

Markus Schwarz wrote:Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany

Try this one on youtube. It's the same video.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

by **Markus Schwarz** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 11:01 am

Unfortunately, I cannot view the video from Germany

by **Roz** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 7:12 pm

That was just lovely!

by **Chris Peterson** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:49 pm

Visual_Astronomer wrote:Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!

Or perhaps, it is a mistake to believe there's a difference between the two.

by **Visual_Astronomer** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:43 pm

hamilton1 wrote:
Chris Peterson wrote:Gravity is an extremely weak force, and it is the product of a distortion of spacetime by mass. A distortion that precisely explains the behavior of those "little specks of matter".
Hmmm or maybe the distortion describes the behaviour of matter rather than explains it. The juxtaposition of those two words inherent in many scientific theories is frustrating, but at the risk of venturing into philosophy I'll leave it there.

Precisely. GR provides a very accurate description of the behavior of matter, but it is a mistake to confuse reality with a mathematical model of it. I have no fear of philosophy!

by **DavidLeodis** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:02 pm

The image of the Earth brought up through the "blue marble" link is awesome (just like similar images). I doubt I will ever tire of seeing such wonderful images.

by **ta152h0** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:08 am

my right hand rule side is on the right side of me

Starship Asterisk*

APOD: To Scale: The Solar System (2015 Dec 25)

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