WOW facts!!...

[rory]

Thing is is the universe really that big??? Or are we just ridiculously small?

ive long had this train of thought. to others (other what i dont know) our planet to them could be an atom. or the milky way could be a single cell in a body.

we can only ever judge distance vastness by our standards .

light (at the moment;)) is only the fastest speed in the KNOWN universe.

so in essence then im saying were part of somethings body

no idea what im saying ,but the small idea i like .

[Doughzer]

latest WOW moment was reading the latest S@N inside the back page where Zaven Arzoumanian is quoted saying that "A teaspoon of the material at the heart of a neutron star would weigh around one billion tonnes on Earth"!

Basically all the components of the atoms at the core are touching, if I read it right!

[Dunkster]

ive long had this train of thought. to others (other what i dont know) our planet to them could be an atom. or the milky way could be a single cell in a body.

we can only ever judge distance vastness by our standards

Also consider the "universe" inside of us... we are made of cells, cells are made of macromolecules, which are made of lots of atoms, atoms themselves being made of subatomic particles... everything is relative

[MorningMajor]

There are so many wow facts that continually amaze me - here's one I read recen tly -

a gamma ray burst caused by two super dense dying stars colliding can produce more energy in 10 seconds than the sun will produce in its entire 10 billion year life

And, add another wow fact - this occurs somewhere in the universe about once a day!!

WOW

[LukeSkywatcher]

I always thought our sun was 'average' but read the other day that it's brighter than 96% of other stars.

I heard something similar except it said that as small as our Sun is, it is in the top 20% of the biggest stars in the universe.

[idbvideo]

I always thought our sun was 'average' but read the other day that it's brighter than 96% of other stars.

Funily enough I went to the Blackpool and District Astronomy Society the other week and the talk was on that very topic ;-)

My wow fact is the vastness of space and that we are an insignificant dot on an insignificant dot that orbits an insignificant dot somewhere in the western spiral arm......

Just looking up, tonight, even though its cloudy, through the gaps at the stars is still a wow moment....

[661-pete]

I heard something similar except it said that as small as our Sun is, it is in the top 20% of the biggest stars in the universe.

I think those of us who know something of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, imagine that because it shows a nice clean correlation between spectral class and luminosity, that Main Sequence stars are bound to be more or less uniformly spread along this band - i.e. as many type A's and B's as there are K's and M's.

A complete fallacy! I remember learning the true picture when I was a student. Most of the stars in the Galaxy are concentrated at the K, M, R N and S end of the diagram. The Sun as a G is well over to the hotter and brighter side of the mean - although it does sit more or less on the median (brighter than it are the O, B, A and F's).

This explains that 'top 20%' statement.

Indeed, as if there was not enough things that had to be "just so" to enable life here on earth, the moon being just the right size and distance from the sun to enable a total eclipse is like whoever or whatever created all of this left a calling card or signed his work...

I've often puzzled over this (this was something we didn't go over in the astronomy course!). Perhaps the 'coincidence' has driven the human race's obsession and fascination with eclipses, throughout history. If we were blessed with a natural satellite of much larger or smaller apparent size, then humans would have no experience and therefore no interest in this phenomenon. Perhaps - as a consequence - astronomy itself would have figured far less in human culture. Who can say?

Is this an example of the 'anthropic principle' at work? We are interested in eclipses - and hence in astronomy as a whole - because of the coincidence of the Sun's and the Moon's apparent sizes?

Can-of-worms opening time....

[Anweniel]

ive long had this train of thought. to others (other what i dont know) our planet to them could be an atom

This kind of idea fascinated me and it really reminded me of these musings when I first saw the Men in Black movie when the aliens where playing marbles with galaxies/universes inside them

[symesie04]

I've often puzzled over this (this was something we didn't go over in the astronomy course!). Perhaps the 'coincidence' has driven the human race's obsession and fascination with eclipses, throughout history. If we were blessed with a natural satellite of much larger or smaller apparent size, then humans would have no experience and therefore no interest in this phenomenon. Perhaps - as a consequence - astronomy itself would have figured far less in human culture. Who can say?

Is this an example of the 'anthropic principle' at work? We are interested in eclipses - and hence in astronomy as a whole - because of the coincidence of the Sun's and the Moon's apparent sizes?

Can-of-worms opening time....

Think it needs to be thought about in a different way. The fact is that our moon was once a lot closer to earth and in the future will be a lot further away. So for the vast majority of their existance they havent matched up in perfect size due to relative distance. The only "coincidence" is the fact that we are sitting here chatting about the amazing "coincidence" during a point in their timeline where they happen to match up from our viewpoint.

[symesie04]

Think i will get the biggest wow moment when i finnally post a quoted reply and it is presented the way i expected it to

[lawsio]

There is no astronomical event possible that Muse wont sing about!

[661-pete]

Think it needs to be thought about in a different way. The fact is that our moon was once a lot closer to earth and in the future will be a lot further away. So for the vast majority of their existance they havent matched up in perfect size due to relative distance. The only "coincidence" is the fact that we are sitting here chatting about the amazing "coincidence" during a point in their timeline where they happen to match up from our viewpoint.

Yes but I still think there's an anthropic principle going on here. Consider: the Moon has always been closer to Earth (on average) than it is at the present day. The tidal drag is pushing it in one direction only: outwards. So there have always been total eclipses, ever since the Moon first got into orbit around Earth. It's in the far future (several million years hence) that the prospect for total eclipses looks doubtful.

And plenty of other moons in the Solar System can cause total eclipses, as viewed from their primary. All four Galileans, plus Amalthea, can do so, in the case of Jupiter, for example.

It's the fact that the Moon (at perigee) only just covers the Sun's photosphere, with little to spare, which is the coincidence. This is what allows those of us who are lucky enough, to get the best possible view of the Corona.

This isn't something that's happened suddenly, of course, I guess for many millennia it's been like this.

And these many millennia are also the period in time in which Homo sapiens (and earlier species of Homo) have evolved into beings with a reasonable level of intelligence (some may dispute the 'reasonable').

Has this 'coincidence' had any part to play in our evolution?

All right, I'm sure some of you may argue, what about the dinosaurs, weren't they endowed with a lot more intelligence than they're usually (and stereotypically) credited with? Maybe. Whether the cleverest of our dinosaurs went to places where they could observe a total eclipse, and were able to appreciate the spectacle, I can't tell you....