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Another Year, Another 20 Billion Kilometers Through The Universe
Scientific American ^ | 12/30/15 | Caleb A. Scharf

Posted on 12/31/2015 6:56:29 PM PST by LibWhacker

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1 posted on 12/31/2015 6:56:29 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

Gravitational pot...
Yeah man. I had some of that once
couldn’t move for hours!!!
And then was I Hungry!!!


2 posted on 12/31/2015 7:01:00 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: LibWhacker

3 posted on 12/31/2015 7:01:34 PM PST by ClearCase_guy (I don't know what Claire Wolfe is thinking but I know what I am thinking.)
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To: LibWhacker

Fascinating. Thanks for posting. HOORAY Caleb A. Scharf


4 posted on 12/31/2015 7:02:37 PM PST by PGalt
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To: LibWhacker

And what about the local cluster? Well, we’re all being pulled in the direction of what is called the Great Attractor, which I don’t like the sound of.


5 posted on 12/31/2015 7:03:21 PM PST by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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To: LibWhacker

I’ve traveled a bunch of light years in my 52 years.

Rotation on the surface of the earth, Orbit around the sun, wandering with the solar system, rotation around the galaxy, galactic movement through the universe.

That adds up to a crapload of miles.


6 posted on 12/31/2015 7:03:22 PM PST by cripplecreek (Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.)
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To: LibWhacker
isolating our little island.

We'll have to make the best of things,
It's an uphill climb.

7 posted on 12/31/2015 7:05:35 PM PST by MUDDOG
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To: All

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbMWdIjArg0


8 posted on 12/31/2015 7:11:25 PM PST by BipolarBob
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To: LibWhacker

The Earth orbits the Sun at the rate of about 66,000 miles per hour. That’s roughly 18 miles per second.


9 posted on 12/31/2015 7:13:51 PM PST by ETL (Ted Cruz 2016!! -- For a better, safer America)
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To: LibWhacker

Are we there yet?


10 posted on 12/31/2015 7:16:58 PM PST by Flick Lives (One should not attend even the end of the world without a good breakfast. -- Heinlein)
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To: LibWhacker

I’m still trying to understand, if we’re ‘physical’,
how can there NOT be an end to the universe


11 posted on 12/31/2015 7:18:43 PM PST by This_far
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To: sparklite2
The Great Attractor, be fearful puny humans!

Actually, the idea I liked most about the GA, was that it was a nearby universe dragging us toward it in the multiverse. But this fellow said nothing about that, so that theory must be out of favor nowadays.

12 posted on 12/31/2015 7:18:57 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

Our own galaxy is so big that, even if we could travel at the speed of light (186,000 miles/sec), it would still take us about 100,000 years to go from one end to the other. And there are believed to be galaxies so distant it would take 13 or 14 billion years to get there at that same speed.


13 posted on 12/31/2015 7:23:54 PM PST by ETL (Ted Cruz 2016!! -- For a better, safer America)
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To: This_far

Curvature. It’s like an ant living on the surface of a beach ball asking how can there not be an end, or a wall of some kind, marking the end of our “universe?” He can walk forever and never bump into a boundary of any kind. Likewise, we can look out into space and never see an end.


14 posted on 12/31/2015 7:24:41 PM PST by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker
Likewise, we can look out into space and never see an end.

Which as a kid I did and pondered (before the shopping malls obliterated the night skies).

However, the 'ball' as you explain it, still has dimension and dimension has limitations (as do we... supposedly).

What's beyond the ball?

15 posted on 12/31/2015 7:32:30 PM PST by This_far
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To: LibWhacker
In particular, at any instant in time, a cubic centimeter of the universe will contain, on average, about 400 cosmic microwave background photons moving in effectively random directions. This ocean of ancient photons can serve to as a tool for sensing our motion. The blue and red Doppler-shifts of the microwave radiation allow us to build a sky map reflecting our passage through space.

Interesting.

16 posted on 12/31/2015 7:33:57 PM PST by TChad
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To: This_far
What's beyond the ball?

Turtles. It's turtles all the way down.

17 posted on 12/31/2015 7:36:37 PM PST by Billthedrill
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To: ETL

Sounds like we are on a collision course with Andromeda Galexy and no one is putting on the brakes.


18 posted on 12/31/2015 7:37:49 PM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of Colorado scenery and wildlife, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: This_far
What's beyond the ball?

Oh my dear Watson, Then we realize just how powerful our God is. After all, He made this and yet we think that we are Him.

19 posted on 12/31/2015 7:42:15 PM PST by rapture-me
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To: LibWhacker

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs.Brown
And things seem hard or tough
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft
And you feel that you’ve had quite enough

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned
A sun that is the source of all our power

The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at forty thousand miles an hour
Of the galaxy we call the ‘milky way’

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us, it’s just three thousand light years wide

We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ‘round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is

So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space
‘Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth


20 posted on 12/31/2015 7:42:33 PM PST by null and void (</x>)
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