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The answer is 42, guys.
Yes, yes, I’m quite sure, it’s 42!
Unexpected factorial
How many roads must a man walk down?
I highly recommend the book “We Have No Idea” by Jorge Cham and Daniel Whitesom. Great explanations of what we know about the universe (with hilarious comic illustrations) and a profound message of just how much we don’t know.
Thanks for this recommendation! I love books that show me how little I truly know about anything.
Like all of Randall Monroe’s books (xckd guy).
Any more book recommendations?
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! I’ve read it twice, apparently I needed to be reminded of how much I didn’t know. 😉
Tide goes in, tide goes out… You can’t explain that.
Oh my god why did you have to remind me that this awful creature exists?
But if I have to then I’ll do it live!
Copernicus deserves a mention. Galileo’s problems resulted (in part) from him being a proponent of Copernicism after the church had declared it heresy.
Heliocentrism was suggested by Copernicus and Galileo built on that, including developing physics to the point where he couldn’t believe otherwise.
The heliocentric models predicted the orbits worse than epicyclic geocentric ones and that is the reason Galileo was told to shut up, the court transcript is like 99% science and then a single subordinate clause saying “it also contradicts the bible”.
Galileo insisted on circular orbits which was his downfall, ironically “because circles are perfect and god would furnish the universe perfect”: That kind of religious language while also being worse science than what was already established did him in. Kepler, based on Brahe’s data, was the first one to get a heliocentric model right and more accurate than the epicyclic ones.
Also earth doesn’t revolve around the sun. If anything both revolve around their shared centre of gravity but really it’s a matter of your frame of reference. Paraphrasing Archimedes: Give me a fixed point in the universe and I will move all your models.
And gravitational stuff. We kinda know it does it, but not how to do anything about it.
Surely that’s “heavy stuff”?
And maybe also “big stuff”. I suppose those two overlap quite a lot?
A nebula is one exception
I thought that meant black holes
How about something simple: Why does gravity feel the same as acceleration?
You can’t feel gravity. What we feel really is acceleration, the acceleration of the earth pushing us up against gravity.
This is from science abridged beyond the point of usefulness right? I have that book.
Edit: yes it is
I think we got the fast stuff under control (special relativity), when you mix it it with like small stuff (quantum field theory), and I guess big stuff (general relativity), it is also OK, but mixing it with anything more than that causes a problem.
Shit’s on fire, yo. But does that fire only produce positive vibes or are there like 90% bad vibes, you know, bro?
Also half magnet stuff is still AWOL
Can’t explain better than this🤯 Repost in [email protected]
