Science and History Corner

[Richard (OldStager)]

Ok, well nailing my colours to the mast right here and say other than cars my other love is science, in all its flavours. If I was pressed I would say cosmology would be number 1 , closely followed by particle physics. I am no more than an arm chair amateur, but strive to learn stuff every day.

I would like , ( if folks are interested) to start an on-going debate and conversation on current science developments, these can be in the form of posts here or a video you watched and liked ( post link) . Not sure if car folks would be interested but hey this is an experiment, ( get it ?) so lets see. 

 

A recent vid from your "Personal Astrophysicist " Mr Neil deGrasse Tyson - I really enjoyed this one.

 

 

And this a day later

 

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

My favorite topic

 

 

I hope I live long enough to see to see a mission that goes beyond the milkyway, but I somehow doubt that will happen - sadly.

 

 

The Q&A to the vid above.

 

[Stuart Davis AO - Devon Cornwall & Somerset]

Nice topic Richard. My other hobby is Astronomy so this does interest me.

 

For me, one of the most amazing scientific events of my lifetime was the discovery of Gravitational waves. To be able to detect these seemed impossible at one time, so it’s testament to our scientific and engineering progress that it has been possible. A few relevant videos here.

 

 

 

 

After some searching, I found the video of what the waves actually ‘look’ like when recorded.

 

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20160211v2

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

I will watch all those this evening, but yes Ligo was a great experiment, what was amazing for me was the fact they were detected not long after the thing was first powered up , I am sure one of these docs mentions it, but at first they thought the machines ( there are two ) were not calibrated correctly. That was a while back now though ( can't recall the announcement year) and it has since found many more of them. So glad that folks are willing to spend what maybe billions on trying to learn about our universe, and it stuns me quite what we can find out given we as humans are stuck to planet earth and we have only visited our own satellite in person a handful of times. The JWST is now providing great data, I watched a vid on that last month, I will see if I can find it tonight. 

 

ETA

Link to wiki in case no one is familiar with the JWST, Hubble did us proud ( and still does) but this moves the game on somewhat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

[Blatman]

My current fave is this. The technology, even for these modern times, is staggering

 

 

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

Another good night of vids then thanks Blatters, not aware of issues with it.

[Richard (OldStager)]

16 hours ago, Stuart Davis (fatblokestu) AO- Devon & Somerset said:

Nice topic Richard. My other hobby is Astronomy so this does interest me.

 

For me, one of the most amazing scientific events of my lifetime was the discovery of Gravitational waves. To be able to detect these seemed impossible at one time, so it’s testament to our scientific and engineering progress that it has been possible. A few relevant videos here.

 

 

 

 

After some searching, I found the video of what the waves actually ‘look’ like when recorded.

 

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/video/ligo20160211v2

 

Yes it was in sept 2015 , didn't think it was that long ago actually. Great vids.

[Richard (OldStager)]

7 hours ago, Blatman said:

My current fave is this. The technology, even for these modern times, is staggering

 

 

 

I hadn't seen that before, such clever blokes at NASA in 1969, also working with what nowadays are redundant devices. Loved the twin laser beams for lining things up, kind of reminded me ( but for different reasons) of how the pilots calculated when to drop the bombs - The Dam Busters. Talking of Apollo 11, I have the full audio broadcast of the whole mission taken from mission control includes the Apollo 11 and the orbiter coms, but no clue as to how to share it here.

[Richard (OldStager)]

I don't have to share it, because its here as well

If you click watch on Youtube, you will see all of the days coverage on the right so 8 days in all. Was chuffed to find this as I was only young at the time but i remember watching a lot of it on TV with my parents. If you want to jump straight to the launch, without all the build up etc, jump to 3:04:02 on the Mission Day1 video . Also if you have the ability to alter the balance left/right, you can pan each way depending on which audio you wish to hear .

[Richard (OldStager)]

I don't wish to fill this topic purely with Apollo 11 stuff, so last one from me, this is a track by Public Service Broadcasting with a track called GO!. They sampled the videos above and made music with them, they do a lot of space related music applying the same technique of sampling old audio.

 

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

Bringing things up to date somewhat, some very recent vids regarding the JWST.

 

 

And

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

I already knew the answer , but watched anyway. It's school boy physics to be honest. But perhaps folks don't follow physics or skipped the lesson that day 🤣

 

 Other than NGT, my favourtite british science communicator is Mr Cox ( was Prof Hawking but we know what happened there 😢) this is a long vid almost an hour .

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

OK just a question this time.

 

What do we think is at the singularity of a black hole, and when we see these black holes dissolving as they do after vast time scales, where do we think the matter went to if it simply disappeared to us looking at it from Earth. I have a theory but was wondering what others think?. Put your favourite nerd hat on and let me know.

 

ETA - a day later.

This doesn't answer my questions, but a good vid all the same( 20 mins)

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

New from the RI today, not watched yet ( will later on) looks interesting.

 

 

 

ETA

Was a good presentation. It never ceases to amaze me the "Spooky Action at a Distance" even now 100 years on we are still talking about  Einstein, and we still don't know how it works, if it didn't you would not be reading this post.

Even Richard Feynman, considered the "father of Quatum Theory didn't know why it worked. There is a good joke about this

 

School classes Quantum Studies.

 

Pupil : But sir why does it work?

Tutor : Shut up and calculate !.

 

Poor old Tutor showing his frustration that he doesn't know.

 

The Q& A for the vid above is here

 

 

[Richard (OldStager)]

Ok, slightly left field with this one, but was none the less happy when this weblink appeared whilst researching something else.

Not finished the whole series, but I watched this when it first aired, was shocked to find out how long ago that actually was.

 

https://archive.org/details/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-1981/E01+·+Episode+1.mp4

 

All episodes available.