jailender Posted June 22, 2022 Share Posted June 22, 2022 Cannae be arsed watching 2 hours of whatever. Any chance of a brief summary? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 First JWST pictures released yesterday. Took a picture of piece of sky Hubble had also taken one of. Here's hubble version From NASA Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 There was a funny juxtaposition on reddit. The picture from JWST and then a post from someone from Northern Ireland boasting how tall their bonefire was. Side by side human engineering feats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Toepoke Posted July 12, 2022 Author Share Posted July 12, 2022 3 hours ago, phart said: First JWST pictures released yesterday. Took a picture of piece of sky Hubble had also taken one of. Here's hubble version From NASA Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground. Good time to be an astronomer, job for life there! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Toepoke said: Good time to be an astronomer, job for life there! My supervisor is joking about how no one cares about hubble now so he has a chance to get a shot of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orraloon Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 1 hour ago, Toepoke said: Good time to be an astronomer, job for life there! You still need to persuade somebody to pay you to do it though. Folk build bonfires for free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orraloon Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 2 minutes ago, phart said: My supervisor is joking about how no one cares about hubble now so he has a chance to get a shot of it. Almost obsolete after about 30 years. 😉 😂 Still, that lasted a lot longer than my last laptop and that never left my living room. 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 12, 2022 Share Posted July 12, 2022 17 minutes ago, Orraloon said: Almost obsolete after about 30 years. 😉 😂 Still, that lasted a lot longer than my last laptop and that never left my living room. 😂 Hubble will also complement JWST they both are configured to different wavelengths. So not quite obselete as you say! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 13, 2022 Share Posted July 13, 2022 3500 year gap between images Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaff Posted July 14, 2022 Share Posted July 14, 2022 I find these new photos terrifying and fascinating in equal measure. We really are so insignificant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeedom Posted July 15, 2022 Share Posted July 15, 2022 12 hours ago, chaff said: I find these new photos terrifying and fascinating in equal measure. We really are so insignificant. On the contrary, I feel the fact that we have the capacity to appreciate these images for what they are and explore the Universe ( at least a little bit ) gives us great significance. There are not too many other atoms in the Universe that can do that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaff Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 On 7/15/2022 at 9:23 AM, Freeedom said: On the contrary, I feel the fact that we have the capacity to appreciate these images for what they are and explore the Universe ( at least a little bit ) gives us great significance. There are not too many other atoms in the Universe that can do that How do you know? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeedom Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 5 minutes ago, chaff said: How do you know? Statistical probability. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 To be fair we have no real idea yet statisically as n=1 at the moment, we have one data point for life. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaff Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 49 minutes ago, Freeedom said: Statistical probability. Does an ant know I'm taking its picture? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeedom Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 1 hour ago, phart said: To be fair we have no real idea yet statisically as n=1 at the moment, we have one data point for life. I'm talking about conscious life that has the capacity to appreciate the universe. I'm pretty sure atoms that have that capacity are in the minority Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chaff Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 1 hour ago, Freeedom said: I'm talking about conscious life that has the capacity to appreciate the universe. I'm pretty sure atoms that have that capacity are in the minority You're already ruling out 99% of the cunts on this planet 😂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeedom Posted July 16, 2022 Share Posted July 16, 2022 25 minutes ago, chaff said: You're already ruling out 99% of the cunts on this planet 😂 I think you're right Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 9 hours ago, Freeedom said: I'm talking about conscious life that has the capacity to appreciate the universe. I'm pretty sure atoms that have that capacity are in the minority As far as i'm aware no atoms have that capacity. It's an emergent property once you get long chain molecules. Unless you're just waxxing poetic and then fair enough, although the universe might very well be infinite and if it is an infinite amount of atoms can do it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exile Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 Interesting to think what number of stargazing civilisations would make us feel chillingly insignificant, cosy/about right, special, or spookily few? say if the number of light blobs in the Webb image was the total number of civilisations? Would that be a reasonable number, or spookily few? say if each light blob was a galaxy and every galaxy had just one stargazing civilisation? ...then you realise that that image is just a sand grain sized portion of the entire night sky? ...and remembering this is just a snapshot looking back deep into time? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
phart Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 4 minutes ago, exile said: Interesting to think what number of stargazing civilisations would make us feel chillingly insignificant, cosy/about right, special, or spookily few? say if the number of light blobs in the Webb image was the total number of civilisations? Would that be a reasonable number, or spookily few? say if each light blob was a galaxy and every galaxy had just one stargazing civilisation? ...then you realise that that image is just a sand grain sized portion of the entire night sky? ...and remembering this is just a snapshot looking back deep into time? The same info makes different people feel different things across the whole spectrum. It's just a subjective experience. We just don't know how often "life" emerges under a set of conditions. Let alone intelligent life. The big problem is we're pretty much too far away from most things for it to be even be an issue of contact anyway. We could be one of an infinite amount of stargazing civilisations and still not have any other ones in our observable universe. Our brains didn't evolve in a way to conceive of the scales of these things. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exile Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 To attempt to answer my own question... for a very rough assumption just for the sake of argument: suppose every star had on average one planet bearing life of some kind - even just tiny microbes we could agree counted as life - some stars might have no planets and no life, others could have the order of ten planets, half with life, and so on. then suppose that most of those kinds of life were just the equivalent of microbes or plankton or worms and so on. Or moths, that would be aware of starlight but did not know what a star was, or even monkeys that could distinguish sun, moon and stars, but not know what they were, in the sense we understand them (say: that each star is a sun). So suppose that each galaxy on average only produced only one civilisation that knew what stars were. That would be a small proportion of life bearing worlds, but still a large number in the whole universe, given how many galaxies there are (there could be trillions, i.e. at least two trillion). So, we're assuming on average every star has some form of life, but only one in 100 million of those life forms (ie one per galaxy on average) has someone who knows that stars are suns. Which is a tiny proportion... but there are a trillion galaxies. So if we took those assumptions, just for the sake of argument, even if we thought the first two proportions felt right (not too few, not too many) we would still face being just one in a trillion stargazing civilisations....is that chillingly insignificant for us? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exile Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 (edited) 17 minutes ago, phart said: The same info makes different people feel different things across the whole spectrum. It's just a subjective experience. We just don't know how often "life" emerges under a set of conditions. Let alone intelligent life. The big problem is we're pretty much too far away from most things for it to be even be an issue of contact anyway. We could be one of an infinite amount of stargazing civilisations and still not have any other ones in our observable universe. Our brains didn't evolve in a way to conceive of the scales of these things. Yes it is subjective, I am just trying to get a feel for what people would think/feel was reasonable, normal, spookily few etc. What I mean is, humans tend to feel 'special' for being the only species to do this and that, on Earth and probably the solar system, but we might start to feel 'spookily few' if we were the only such species in the whole galaxy, let alone universe. And yes we don't know the proportions of life/intelligent life, but I am just making some rough assumptions to see how the numbers would feel to us. Actually there is more than one dimension going on here as I have just convinced myself that one 'stargazing civilisation' per galaxy would feel spookily few, yet trillions of stargazing civilisations could make us feel chillingly insignificant. Which kind of accords with your point about our brains and being unable to handle big numbers. Edited July 17, 2022 by exile Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orraloon Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 59 minutes ago, exile said: To attempt to answer my own question... for a very rough assumption just for the sake of argument: suppose every star had on average one planet bearing life of some kind - even just tiny microbes we could agree counted as life - some stars might have no planets and no life, others could have the order of ten planets, half with life, and so on. then suppose that most of those kinds of life were just the equivalent of microbes or plankton or worms and so on. Or moths, that would be aware of starlight but did not know what a star was, or even monkeys that could distinguish sun, moon and stars, but not know what they were, in the sense we understand them (say: that each star is a sun). So suppose that each galaxy on average only produced only one civilisation that knew what stars were. That would be a small proportion of life bearing worlds, but still a large number in the whole universe, given how many galaxies there are (there could be trillions, i.e. at least two trillion). So, we're assuming on average every star has some form of life, but only one in 100 million of those life forms (ie one per galaxy on average) has someone who knows that stars are suns. Which is a tiny proportion... but there are a trillion galaxies. So if we took those assumptions, just for the sake of argument, even if we thought the first two proportions felt right (not too few, not too many) we would still face being just one in a trillion stargazing civilisations....is that chillingly insignificant for us? Frank Drake did this for you 60 years ago. No harm in you going through the same thought process though, to see if you come to similar conclusions. Most folk nowadays would agree that it's a far more complicated calculation than the Drake Equation might seem to suggest. He himself knew it was a very simplified model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation#:~:text=The Drake equation is a,in the Milky Way Galaxy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freeedom Posted July 17, 2022 Share Posted July 17, 2022 3 hours ago, phart said: As far as i'm aware no atoms have that capacity. It's an emergent property once you get long chain molecules. Unless you're just waxxing poetic and then fair enough, although the universe might very well be infinite and if it is an infinite amount of atoms can do it. You are being unnecessarily pedantic as per usual. Did you actually think I was suggesting individual atoms have consciousness? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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