Concepts or ideas you just can't get your head around?

Concepts or ideas you just can't get your head around?

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Discussion

Last Visit

2,895 posts

190 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Roofless Toothless said:
Tim330 said:
Roofless Toothless said:
This is the Andromeda Galaxy. On a clear night you can see it with the naked eye.



It contains a trillion stars, and it takes light 150 years to get from one side of it to the other.

I find this hard to comprehend, but still easier to understand than why the wife wants to move house.
I haven't looked it up but think it's comparable in size to the Milky Way so more than 150 light years across.
You are right. I’m even more flabbergasted now.
When we talk of light years, I find the concept of those hard to fathom sometimes. More than 150 years for light to get from one side to the other in the example above. Yet that same light would travel around the entire earth back to the starting point in 0.13 seconds and yet it takes over 150 years to cover one end of the Andromeda galaxy to the other. Thats just mind blowing.

Baldchap

7,805 posts

94 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Magnets.

I move a magnet near something magnetic and the other thing moves.

Don't give me all that potential energy crap, it was still, not storing anything, and it moved. Breaks the law of conservation of energy and is therefore magic.

Abbott

2,494 posts

205 months

Tuesday 21st May
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TUS373 said:
Loads of things befuddle me.

Inflation .... someone puts their price up for their goods. The person buying it puts their prices up to afford it...and so on. Crackers really.

Car values. E.g a Lambo/Ferrari is metal, composites and glass. Because it has a big engine and a different shape to other cars...it costs the same as a house

Range Rovers/Land Rovers...how they sell any. They cost more and are less reliable, yet people pay money every month to pretend they own one.

TV programmes that come down the bell wire of a phone line.
I think you are mixing up Cost and Price in your point about Car Values. The Brand is what makes the difference in the selling price of a car. A stronger brand can get a higher selling price and bigger profit.



TUS373

4,628 posts

283 months

Tuesday 21st May
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Hence....nonsense!

jdw100

4,300 posts

166 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Baldchap said:
Magnets.

I move a magnet near something magnetic and the other thing moves.

Don't give me all that potential energy crap, it was still, not storing anything, and it moved. Breaks the law of conservation of energy and is therefore magic.
Yes, explained to me at school but i just don’t ‘trust’ the explanation. Magnets storing energy and spinning electrons in one direction….hmmmmm?..?

Also on the topic of forces: you have never actually touched anything ever.

Edited by jdw100 on Wednesday 22 May 05:14

jdw100

4,300 posts

166 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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SpudLink said:
Scotter said:
SpudLink said:
The light that's been travelling 13.6 billion years is the limit of the 'observable universe'. Anything further away hasn't reached us yet. But there is possibly infinitely more beyond that distance.
And because the universe is expanding it means the things we are seeing from 13.6 billion years away are now much much further away than they were.
Expanding into what though? I’ve always wondered.
Also with regards to the big bang theory,I’ve always wondered how something was there to start with in order to kick start it all,so surely there has always been something about and therefore there can’t be a beginning of time as my small brain can understand,which means there’s always been an existence of sorts.Always.
I’m off to church…..
The empty space between clusters of galaxies is expanding. So clusters of galaxies are moving further away from other clusters.
There is no ‘edge’ that expands into unfilled space.
As I said, our primate brains have not evolved to deal with it.
You can’t say that with full certainty.

We have the observable universe which we can confirm, the causal universe where we can see some interaction (probably) with the observable universe.

Then the whole Universe…. We can predict what that might be, based upon our observable universe, but have no way of actually knowing/proving.

Then you have a predicted shape of the Universe. We might be on the inside of a spherical Universe - so yes there would be no edge. Or a toroid. However as we can not ‘see’ a curvature then the Universe must (according to this type model) be at least 500 times the size of the observable universe. That would just make it really rather large but not an infinite space.

In addition since the Universe may be ‘flat’ an edge is perfectly possible if we are just three dimensions inside a higher dimensional space.

It could go on for ever, you might come around to your location starting point or reach a hard stop/edge - we will probably never know.


Edited by jdw100 on Wednesday 22 May 05:04

nismocat

478 posts

10 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Lotobear said:
simon_harris said:
gearboxes - also witchcraft the same as knitting.
I'll raise you - differentials, kugelmotors
To me that is very understandable and interesting but I can never get my head around coding, even though I tried to do it years ago.

Would not surprise me if you two were both coders or IT dudes!

740EVTORQUES

643 posts

3 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Audio processing on computers. How can they digitally filter sounds in (virtually) real time on 100’s of tracks at a time.

And GPU’s raytracing and doing particle physics and rendering at 100 fps or whatever, it’s mental.

SpudLink

6,072 posts

194 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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SpudLink said:
There is no ‘edge’ that expands into unfilled space.
jdw100 said:
You can’t say that with full certainty.
have the observable universe which we can confirm, the causal universe where we can see some interaction (probably) with the observable universe.

Then the whole Universe…. We can predict what that might be, based upon our observable universe, but have no way of actually knowing/proving.

Then you have a predicted shape of the Universe. We might be on the inside of a spherical Universe - so yes there would be no edge. Or a toroid. However as we can not ‘see’ a curvature then the Universe must (according to this type model) be at least 500 times the size of the observable universe. That would just make it really rather large but not an infinite space.

In addition since the Universe may be ‘flat’ an edge is perfectly possible if we are just three dimensions inside a higher dimensional space.

It could go on for ever, you might come around to your location starting point or reach a hard stop/edge - we will probably never know.
I can’t say anything with certainty. jester

As I said earlier, we use maths to try to explain it, but the alternative models of the universe such as those you describe don’t made it easier to get my head around.



NWTony

2,856 posts

230 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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john2443 said:
I heard a radio programme (you might be able to find it if you can think of the right thing to Google!) about sports people having time to think - their minds go into warp speed so everything slows down.

You might have experienced it if you've been in an accident - I've only had it once, when I ran someone over on my pushbike (doing cycling-leptons) I can still remember 50 years later flying through the air with plenty of time to think about what to do to minimise the pain when I hit the road.

if it's your job you train yourself to do it as required.

Cricketers said they have time to think what to do in the fraction of a second as the ball flies towards them, Usain Bolt said the 100m was the longest 9.8 secs of his life, plenty of time to look around to check where the others were, Lewis Hamilton said the 8 secs of the main straight gave him lots of time to read the pit board, check the dash, look at the crowd etc before the next bend.
I can't recall where i saw it but I read an article that basically says the batsmen is playing the ball as it leaves the bowlers hand given the time it takes for the visual signals to reach and be processed by the brain.

simon_harris

1,425 posts

36 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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nismocat said:
Lotobear said:
simon_harris said:
gearboxes - also witchcraft the same as knitting.
I'll raise you - differentials, kugelmotors
To me that is very understandable and interesting but I can never get my head around coding, even though I tried to do it years ago.

Would not surprise me if you two were both coders or IT dudes!
I fell attacked by this comment!


But yes I have spent more than 30 years as an IT dude...

Randy Winkman

16,504 posts

191 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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NWTony said:
john2443 said:
I heard a radio programme (you might be able to find it if you can think of the right thing to Google!) about sports people having time to think - their minds go into warp speed so everything slows down.

You might have experienced it if you've been in an accident - I've only had it once, when I ran someone over on my pushbike (doing cycling-leptons) I can still remember 50 years later flying through the air with plenty of time to think about what to do to minimise the pain when I hit the road.

if it's your job you train yourself to do it as required.

Cricketers said they have time to think what to do in the fraction of a second as the ball flies towards them, Usain Bolt said the 100m was the longest 9.8 secs of his life, plenty of time to look around to check where the others were, Lewis Hamilton said the 8 secs of the main straight gave him lots of time to read the pit board, check the dash, look at the crowd etc before the next bend.
I can't recall where i saw it but I read an article that basically says the batsmen is playing the ball as it leaves the bowlers hand given the time it takes for the visual signals to reach and be processed by the brain.
Cheers both. There was a TV documentary a few years ago about memory that included a bit about a parachutist badly injured in a skydive (that might be the wrong term) who described his memory of it happening in slow motion. It must be the same for gymnasts and divers.

NWTony

2,856 posts

230 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Honourable Dead Snark said:
How sounds/music can be recorded on to devices and replayed, particularly vinyl. Doesn’t matter how many videos I watch about it, I will never get it.
This! I just can't understand it, how is there enough information in a groove on a record to contain the sound of an orchestra?how does it know the difference between a french horn and a violin from grooves? On a telephone how does sound like the voice of the person you are talking to, I mean its just copper wire? Mystery to me.

Skeptisk

7,711 posts

111 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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NWTony said:
I can't recall where i saw it but I read an article that basically says the batsmen is playing the ball as it leaves the bowlers hand given the time it takes for the visual signals to reach and be processed by the brain.
Exactly this. I saw a documentary and they had a bowling machine. They placed a lump under the carpet (it was indoors) so that the ball deflected on hitting the ground. The batsmen (I think it was a current test cricketer at the time of the documentary but I can’t remember who) missed the ball every time. They also noticed that when he hit the ball he had closed his eyes.

Upinflames

1,734 posts

180 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Discendo Discimus said:
BoRED S2upid said:
The Pyramids of Egypt. Absolutely blow my mind. We couldn’t recreate those with 100 massive cranes and thousands of workers. Yet they did it way back then with ropes and animal power!
What makes you think we couldn't recreate them now? That's one of those things a lot of people think is fact, but has no basis in reality.
We (modern humans) are currently building a 1km high tower building.
A pyramid wouldn't be a challenge now.
There are 2.3 million cut stones, weighing up to 70 tons each. It was built in 20 years which is the official line.

That's a stone placed with perfect precision every 4 minutes for 20 years.

I'd say that's a bit of an ask.

Hard-Drive

4,106 posts

231 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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Stacking the dishwasher in the "correct" manner.

I am reminded often that this is something I do not yet fully understand.

WrekinCrew

4,664 posts

152 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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High-end ear-buds. How can something not much bigger than a baked bean contain a 24-hour battery, Bluetooth transceiver, noise-cancelling, touch-control and gesture logic, a microphone, an accelerometer, and three drivers producing sound quality as good as a fridge-sized hifi loudspeaker.

Baldchap

7,805 posts

94 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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jdw100 said:
Also on the topic of forces: you have never actually touched anything ever.
So technically I'm not a wker? laugh

bristolbaron

4,900 posts

214 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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john2443 said:
Randy Winkman said:
For me I've never understood really good cricket batsman and how they can hit a fast paced ball that swings in the air and moves off the pitch.
I heard a radio programme (you might be able to find it if you can think of the right thing to Google!) about sports people having time to think - their minds go into warp speed so everything slows down.

You might have experienced it if you've been in an accident - I've only had it once, when I ran someone over on my pushbike (doing cycling-leptons) I can still remember 50 years later flying through the air with plenty of time to think about what to do to minimise the pain when I hit the road.

if it's your job you train yourself to do it as required.

Cricketers said they have time to think what to do in the fraction of a second as the ball flies towards them, Usain Bolt said the 100m was the longest 9.8 secs of his life, plenty of time to look around to check where the others were, Lewis Hamilton said the 8 secs of the main straight gave him lots of time to read the pit board, check the dash, look at the crowd etc before the next bend.
On a very small scale I can understand being ‘in the zone’ as a very real thing. I used to play A LOT of table football when I was younger and when in a rhythm everything would seem to slow down and it became easier to track the ball - it almost felt like cheating. laugh Take that to the extreme of highly talented sportspeople and I can see how they’d feel that way.

So mine - memory. Where and how EXACTLY is it stored at a cellular level? We can say this part of the brain does this stuff and that part does that stuff, but the idea a collection of cells decide to group together to store information and report it back when required (or at random!) is beyond me.

thegreenhell

15,876 posts

221 months

Wednesday 22nd May
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SpudLink said:
SpudLink said:
There is no ‘edge’ that expands into unfilled space.
jdw100 said:
You can’t say that with full certainty.
have the observable universe which we can confirm, the causal universe where we can see some interaction (probably) with the observable universe.

Then the whole Universe…. We can predict what that might be, based upon our observable universe, but have no way of actually knowing/proving.

Then you have a predicted shape of the Universe. We might be on the inside of a spherical Universe - so yes there would be no edge. Or a toroid. However as we can not ‘see’ a curvature then the Universe must (according to this type model) be at least 500 times the size of the observable universe. That would just make it really rather large but not an infinite space.

In addition since the Universe may be ‘flat’ an edge is perfectly possible if we are just three dimensions inside a higher dimensional space.

It could go on for ever, you might come around to your location starting point or reach a hard stop/edge - we will probably never know.
I can’t say anything with certainty. jester

As I said earlier, we use maths to try to explain it, but the alternative models of the universe such as those you describe don’t made it easier to get my head around.
The light from stars, including all those most distant observable stars, is travelling in all directions, not just towards us. Therefore the universe must be expanding at the speed of light in all directions, otherwise the light would hit an edge of some kind. Or is it even faster than that, as there is internal expansion as well as the 'edge' expansion? We can never see the 'edge' of the universe, if it even has one, because it is moving away from us faster than the speed of light, so no light or other information from it can ever reach us.

If space-time is curved into a sphere, toroid, or any other continuous, edgeless shape, then at some point that light would reach us and be observable from another direction. However, if this curved universe is so vast that it appears locally flat, then it will take so long for that light to do a lap then nobody will be here to observe it when it eventually gets here.

Or it's all just a simulation.