Slightly Less Boring Default

Professor Kirchhof here to explain spacial physics in a nut shell.

Take four very, very strong rods.  Place said rods in four different places to make a square, but place them trillions of miles apart.  Attach very strong trampoline fabric to these four points, pull it tight.  Take a bowling ball and set it anywhere on this fabric.  The large indention around it represents the indention in the space - time continuum.  Roll a marble to the side of this indention.  One of two things will happen.  It’ll curve and keep going in a different direction without slowing down much (assume there’s no friction) or it will curve and go in to orbit around the ball for a while.  You’ve just demonstrated an asteroid veering off course or an asteroid turning int0 a moon.

Now, this was a planet on a two dimensional plain.  Imagine these planets on a three dimensional plain — aka, trampoline fabric all around.  It creates a gravitational field in all directions.

Let’s go back to our two dimensional plain.  What happens if the fabric rips?  What’s on the other side?  No one knows. You’ve got yourself a miniature black hole.  In a three dimensional environment, since it’s rip in all directions, it will suck things through to God knows where.

Ta - da, quantum spacial physics.

Ryan

P.S:  Yes, I know the image is a bit awry.

Oh, it makes me angry when I hear someone blurt out ‘we’re alone in the universe’.  It makes zero sense.  One of my beliefs is that not all life is carbon based.  There could be hydrogen based sky jellyfish on Jupiter for all we know.  Recently, I’ve studied and studied on the subject regarding extraterrestrial life and extrasolar planets.  Accounting for planets, dwarf planets and probable dwarf planets, we come to the determination that there are not eight, not nine but seventeen planets in all.  Around our sun, which is a normal g-type star.  Our star is the vanilla of the universe, and even then it’s still relatively small.

Moving on.  Let’s see if I can remember these seventeen worlds in order.

Mercury, no moons.

Venus, no moons.

Earth, one moon.

Mars, two moons.

Ceres, no moons.

Jupiter, more than 62 moons.

Saturn, more than 62 moons.

Uranus, probably more than 27 moons.

Neptune, probably more than 13 moons.

Pluto, 3 moons (Charon, Nix, Hydra).

Orcus, 1 moons (Vanth).

Haumea, 2 moons (Hi’iaka, Namaka).

Varuna, no moons.

Quaoar, 1 moon (Weywot).

Makemake, no moons.

Eris, 1 moon (Dysomnia).

Sedna, no moons.

In the last few years we’ve almost doubled the amount of planets known directly to the public.  I find this amazing.

“We’re a rare case, why don’t we detect the planets in other star systems,” some might ask.  To this, I’ll answer with two things.  One would be steam blowing out of my ears, the second would be this.

We do, but we only detect the occasional few because these are both 1.) big and 2.) close to their parent star.  Hell, we can’t detect all of the moons and planets in our own solar system (yet).  We just do not have the technological proficiency.  I truly would not be surprised if there was life around every star.  Intelligent life?  That’s a discussion for another time and place.

The moral of the story is that I get angry when people tell me we’re alone in the universe.

If anyone needs me I’ll be in the angry dome.

Ryan