Dumb Question?

[sc_curtis]

One of the better quotes I've seen on tubenet.

The light redshits because of the expansion of the universe.

Nice...

[sc_curtis]

One of the better quotes I've seen on tubenet.

The light redshits because of the expansion of the universe.

Nice...

I should not post on the ol' TubeNet after a long day at work and a few beers at home...

On the contrary, you should! It makes things so much more fun for all...

In fact, have another!

[Kevin Hendrick]

I should not post on the ol' TubeNet after a long day at work and a few beers at home...

On the contrary, you should! It makes things so much more fun for all...

In fact, have another!

If you insist...going to the 'fridge now...

Very good! And remember -- "shifts happen"!

[LoyalTubist]

Did you have an F malfunction there?

[Kevin Hendrick]

Did you have an F malfunction there?

Yef, I fertainly did -- very obfervant!

[iiipopes]

Ground Control to Major Tom....

[Biggs]

One of the better quotes I've seen on tubenet.

The light redshits because of the expansion of the universe.

Nice...

The expansion of the universe has funny effects on us all.

[Dylan King]

God spoke of the expanding universe before any scientist figured it out...

Isaiah 40:21 Have you not known?
Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is He who sits above the circle of the earth,
And its inhabitants are like grasshoppers,
Who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
And spreads them out like a tent to dwell in.

[TMurphy]

Stars don't twinkle. Planets twinkle. This is caused by the reflection of the sun on the planet and the reaction of the earth's atmosphere. But this doesn't happen in space.

How did I know that?

That's not the case. Stars DO twinkle when viewed from the Earth's surface, and planets *usually* do not. I have observed this on many occasions trying to find Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in a telescope. Planets definitely do not twinkle.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjec ... nkle.shtml

[Chuck(G)]

Forgive me, but I was being pedantic and trying to show how a simple statement such as "nothing gets in the way" can lead to some very profound and fundamental questions about where we live.

I'll go back to my usual insanity...

[Mark]

Stars don't twinkle. Planets twinkle.

Stars twinkle. Planets do not. AND, less filling!

[LoyalTubist]

Maybe it's the Vietnamese beer I have been drinking.

[Rick Denney]

Stars don't twinkle. Planets twinkle.

Stars twinkle. Planets do not. AND, less filling!

It depends on just how bad the seeing is.

("Seeing" is the astronomer description of the turbulence in the atmosphere. Bad seeing means the air is so turbulent you often can't see what you are looking for.)

As the seeing gets worse, the stars start to twinkle first. The reason is that the star is so distant that the diameter of the star disk is infinitesimally small. The Sun, our nearest star at a mere 90,000,000 miles away, subtends an angle of about half a degree. All other stars subtend angles so small we can't see the disk, even with powerful telescopes. Thus, the light coming from those stars creates a point source which can be interrupted or deflected by the tiniest little convection current. As those currents move around, the star twinkles.

Planets are close enough so that we can resolve their physical diameter optically. Thus, they aren't a point source of light, but a small collection of parallel light rays. It takes a bigger atmospheric current to cause a visible wiggle in the light coming from a planet.

Someone mentioned that the stars would look the same from 30,000 miles away. We can actually observe the positions of stars with respect to other stars from two points about 180 million miles apart. That's the diameter of the Earth's orbit. The star field will be subtly shifted as we observe at different times of the year. But from Alpha Centauri, the nearest star at only 2.6x10^13 miles away, the diameter of the Earth's orbit subtends an angle of only about 1.4 arc-seconds, or .0004 degrees. So stellar parallax is pretty tiny.

The largest stars have a diameter larger than Earth's orbit, but the stars that big are too far away for use to be able to observe that diameter. We have been able to resolve as single points of light the largest stars in the galaxy nearest to the Milky Way, which is Andromeda.

Light is ionizing electromagnetic radiation, and it's visible even in the vacuum of space. Unlike sound, electromagnetic radiation does not need molecules of matter to pass it along.

And on the subject of red shift, we invited one of our distinguished professors (Rober Hermann, one of the developers of the Big Bang Theory at Princeton before becoming a leading traffic flow theoretician) to give a lecture at the University of Texas. The posters advertising the event showed traffic on a freeway, with red cars receding and blue cars approaching. The lecture was titled "Cosmology and Traffic Flow".

Rick "not really expecting that to amuse many Tubenetters" Denney

[djwesp]

Scott,

If you drink red beer, is that what causes redshit?

Doc

I hope he is referring to "red beers" and not "red" beer... which is the local favorite in nebraska. Chunky tomato juice in budlight----ugh.

[TMurphy]

Doc,

It's clear from your love of hefeweizen, that we have different beer tastes. That being said, the absolute best beer I have ever tried was Belhaven Scottish Ale, and the only place I ever had it was at an English-style pub in Boston. I don't brew (though I've wanted to for some time), but if I did, I would definitely be looking for a recipe for something similar. Creamy, smooth, and delicious. If you like darker beers, I definitely reccomend trying to make some. This website has a kit to brew something similar:

http://beer-wine-brewing.com/catalog/pr ... ucts_id=77

If I ever find the time to homebrew, that's the first thing I want to make.