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thekaijudude · 5 years

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Okay now here’s a two vs two matchup, Ultraseven and Ultraman Jack vs Gigan and Megalon

Hi!

Wow this is definitely gonna be a test of my memory of the two ultra series but ill try my best lol

The two Ultras in question are actually much more than a match for Gigan and Megalon tbh (Also im gonna use Millennium Gigan here as youll soon see why Gigan needs the amp here)

But as usual, the Showa Ultras are always holding back for the sake of having dramatic fights as well as them always showing mercy to their opponents. However, I shall use some of the actual feats that the Ultras have displayed to give you an idea how strong they truly are in order to explain how I arrived at my conclusion

Ultraseven (1967)

Seven is very well known for his expertise in using the Ultra Willpower as well as the Eye Slugger, not to mention that he can combine both tactics to use in battle as well.

With his Ultra Willpower, he can literally toss opponents and negate any homing attacks and either redirect them at his enemies or simply just destroy them, and even if he dosent manage to do so, he has an ability called ‘Body Spark’, which repels any projectile attack.

His Emerium Beam is strong enough to literally vaporize enemies. But for stronger opponents where his Emerium Beam doesn’t even faze them, his Wide Shot (which I highly suspect is still suppressed) can still manage to vaporize all of the flesh off them, leaving only bones behind.

Even so, his Eye Slugger is also so sharp that its able to cleanly slice an enemy in two like a knife through butter in one episode when the Emerium Beam also had no effect on the kaiju.

As for his physical capabilities:

He has enough strength to literally tear off appendages of kaiju as seen with Gyeron.

Has also managed to survive being ran over by the 70 000t Dinosaur tank multiple times

Shrugs off a beam that one shot Windom, a mech from alien gut’s spaceship

Not to mention he can literally manually recharge his energy due to him having special Ultra Protectors to absorb sunlight

The next few feats of power will exemplify how strong Seven truly is as in these battles were the stakes were very high, Seven shows a hint of his true power:

1. In the episode where he fought Crazygon, even though his Emerium Beam and Wide Shot were unable to damage him, his sheer speed after being propelled from a rocket launcher was literally able to one-shot him

(Note that in that final fight, Seven was already critically injured)

2. In the final arc, Seven was already severely low on energy due to his fights on Earth, he still manages to kill the final boss of his own series, Pandon, TWICE.

And in the second battle he still manages to use his ultra willpower to one shot reconstructed pandon

(Note that in the second battle, Seven was even weaker than in the first round and yet he still can exert this much control over his Ultra Willpower, imagine his max control at perfect condition)

3. Fought Petero on the moon at sub zero temperature (Lets remember that most M78 Ultras are weak to cold) where Seven had to finish the fight fast, he absorbed the little amount of energy obtained from a nearby asteroid which collided on the moon to obliterate Petero with one wide shot

4. He bested Robot Ultraseven, his virtual equal without much difficulty

(As the creators of Robot Ultraseven analysed the fights Seven had, they engineered it to be supposedly as strong as Seven’s displayed fighting prowess (except the emerium beam iirc), but the fact that Seven still managed to best him supports the fact that Seven was holding back a lot in his previous fights prior to the encounter with Robot Ultraseven)

Current Ultraseven:

In Ultra Fight Orb, he was able to manhandle King Joe, when in 1967 he could virtually do nothing against it

In the Orb Movie, Seven’s eye slugger was able to cut through the Deavorick Cannon, the attack that sent Orb Trinity back, aside from its sheer force, this also says something about his reaction speed as well.

Seven was able to physically grapple with Deavorick along with Orb Trinity(whom stats is MONSTROUS as most of his stats are the highest ever recorded), does this means that Seven and by extension the current ultra brothers can be scaled to OT? Its debatable but that’s a question to be answered for another time.

Ultraman Jack (1971)

Considering that throughout his series, we see that he oftenly incorporates lifting his opponent and tossing them around into his fighting style so I think it’s fair to assume that Jack is physically stronger than Ultraman and Seven (Even if he isn’t, he’s arguably stronger than both of them overall as ill explain later)

Moreover, considerably more of Jack’s battles in his series involves him fighting two kaijus simultaneously, so he’s definitely no stranger to getting double teamed so taking on both Gigan and Megalon is no issue for him.

He could probably take Millennium Gigan with ease considering Jack literally tossed Black King (60 000t) way up into the air who weighs exactly the same as Millennium Gigan with seemingly no effort at all

This is further cemented when Jack picked and launched Builgamo easily as well who was 68 000t

Not to mention that he lifted and tossed around Seagorath which weighed 52 000t (when his colour timer was flashing red no less)

Another point to note that Jack seems to oftenly use his vastly superior strength along with his speed in aerial battles with airborne enemies. He literally just accelerates towards an opponent and throws them off course mid flight with so much force that made a tanky airborne enemy like Terochilus hit the ground and died immediately upon impact, we see him do this very often (Note that it was shown to be unfazed by Jack’s Ultra Shot and Specium Ray previously)

Also a rather significant point to note that he transforms through pure ultra willpower without any henshin item, does that mean his Ultra Willpower is stronger than Ultras who require a henshin item to transform? This point is debatable but very convincing as we saw one instance of Jack possibly using his Ultra Willpower on such a level that we’ve never seen before, which was when he literally repelled a Tsunami that was stated to be ‘hundreds of feet tall’ created by Seagorath via his Ultra Barrier but u can argue that he either actually used his Ultra Willpower or ‘reinforced’ his Barrier with his Ultra Willpower

On the topic of Jack being pit against kaiju who could summon natural disasters, I remember that there were 2 more of such cases:

1. Created a Typhoon that was even stronger than Varricane’s which launched it into space

2. Defeated King Bockle who could summon Earthquakes on a whim

We can also assume that overall, jack also has a stronger beam potency that Ultraman and Seven as significantly more one shots occurred within his series

Not to mention that his Cinerama Shot was stated to be 10x stronger than Seven’s Wide Shot (Note that it wasn’t clarified whether its 10x stronger than the normal, uncharged Wide Shot or the Charged Wide Shot)

Jack also displayed strength at least on par with Ultraman and Seven as he was able to chop off the solid horns and literally tear of the arms off Paragon

As for his durability,

He is vulnerable to electricity but his Ultra Armor could tank more than the damage done by a nuclear missile in addition to being resistant to fire.

His head is also stated to be 2000x harder than iron. To put this in perspective, Mechagodzilla’s Space titanium armor is 10x stronger than steel, steel is 2x stronger than iron, which makes Jack (1971) 100x tougher than Showa Mechagodzilla

So yeah, can you even imagine Gigan being able to tear through Mechagodzilla in the first place?

At this point if you don’t think Jack is OP yet, well he essentially becomes almost BROKEN after he receives his Ultra Bracelet from Seven.

You can see the entire list of abilities the Ultra Bracelet (Which is probably non-exhaustive tbh) has on Ultrawiki but ill highlight some significant ones:

1. For those kaiju that Jack can’t defeat with his already IMMENSE strength?

Well the Ultra Bracelet one shots them with the Ultra Spark which can make a tough kaiju like Magnedon which could hold out against several billion volts of electricity explode in one shot

2. Jack was once frozen solid and mutilated, but Ultra Bracelet literally

a) Rejoined his mutilated pieces back together

b) Unfroze him

c) At literally NO COST AT ALL

3. Reflects projectile attacks with a higher potency than original

But you could say that jack’s physical attacks were as lethal as Ultra Spark as we saw Alien Zelan used the Ultra Bracelet against jack and made the Bracelet released hundreds of Ultra Sparks which Jack managed to parry a few before finally being overwhelmed

Jack also defeated a stronger variant of Zetton that Ultraman fought and lost against, this time being Zetton Gen 2 which Ultraman himself initially warned Jack to stay away from. But Jack went to fight Zetton anyways, while against Alien Bat simultaneously nonetheless

Also let’s not forget, Jack also literally defeated a planet eater that was Vaccumon (was stated to be infinite in size but yeah DOUBTS, but his planetary feats were undeniable) and the sword the Ultra Bracelet transformed into was used to kill it (This also says something about this particular sword the Ultra Bracelet transformed into)

Current Ultraman Jack

In Ultraman Zero the Chronicle when Zero and Jack were having a spar with their own respective Ultra Lances, Jack was able to position his Ultra Lance close to Zero’s chest, nearly impaling him just after Zero descended on him after the latter distracted him with his Ultra Willpower.

This shows that current Jack’s reaction speed is probably much faster than Zero’s flight speed which is Mach 7

In Ultra Fight Orb, Jack easily manhandled Gudon and Twintail with no difficulty at all when both of them forced Jack to retreat back in 1971

So tbh as far as Gigan and Megalon goes, theres not much they can do against Seven and Jack.

None of their attacks have enough firepower to rival even a nuclear missile

Jack is essentially immune to Megalon’s Napalm Bombs

Millennium Gigan’s Bladed Slicers wont work cause both ultras have their Ultra Willpower which may even cause the Bladed Slicers to work against Gigan instead (Assuming that the Ultra Willpower dosent make them explode in the first place)

Seven’s and probably Jack’s flight speed is more than twice as fast as Gigan’s and Megalon’s flight speed on Earth, and a battle in space would essentially be game over as Ultras’ flight speed in space is light speed.

The only 2 things I can see working for Megalon are that:

1. His punches can discharge electrical energy

2. His shell is as hard as diamond, which is 600x stronger than iron

But I haven’t even brought in the rest of the abilities of the Ultras like literally freezing them solid, paralysis ray, stop ray and whatnot.

Not to mention the fact that the amount of hax abilities that Ultras can use when there are more than 1 Ultra on the battlefield like the exponentially much powerful combo beams and attacks.

In addition, im mostly centering the argument around Ultraseven (1967) and Ultraman Jack (1971), current Seven and Jack would just take the W much, much faster.

So in conclusion, even if both kaiju were to double team either Seven or Jack, it would still be overkill.

Thanks for the question!

#ultraman #godzilla

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slowlyteenagestarlight · 2 years

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Invariably anticipated this fourth wall collapsing seven years past. Forecasting helps HerbDoc “”… It’s their hill to die on! That’s why training evolved. Death is easy. Refusing to take life is connected with overstanding the process of no one really dies. Energy is transitional, kinetic as all constructs are vibrationally low and all but motionless to an untrained { I }, Or violently on a corporeal location as sound is folded from a{ Through } C. Bypassing b.

by Tia Ghose

April 19, 2016

from LiveScience Website

Spanish version

Scientists have observed

a bizarre phenomenon called time reversal

in which light waves seem to travel backward in time.

Credit: bunnavit pangsuk / Shutterstock.com

Using a weird phenomenon in which particles of light seem to travel at faster-than-light speeds, scientists have shown that waves of light can seem to travel backward in time.

The new experiment also shows other bizarre effects of light, such as pairs of images forming and annihilating each other. Taken together, the results finally prove a century-old prediction made by British scientist and polymath Lord Rayleigh.

The phenomenon, called time reversal, could allow researchers to develop ultra-high-speed cameras that can peer around corners and see through walls.

Backtracking sound waves

Lord Rayleigh - the brilliant British physicist who discovered the noble gas argon and explained why the sky is blue - also made a bizarre prediction about sound waves nearly a century ago.

Rayleigh reasoned that, because the speed of sound is fixed, an object traveling faster than that while spewing out sound would result in sound waves that would seem to travel in the opposite direction of the object and thus seem to be reversed in time orientation.

For instance, a phonograph on a plane traveling at Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound, would seem to play the music backward.

No scientists really doubted this notion, but there was no easy way to test it.

"Using sound, it's something that's really hard to verify and actually hear," said study co-author Daniele Faccio, a physicist at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland.

Sound travels at 761.2 mph (1,225 km/h), but that means that, to hear a 3-second clip of music going backward, a supersonic jet traveling at Mach 2 (or twice the speed of sound) would start replaying the music more than a mile from the listener's location.

The scattering and absorption of the sound waves in the air would make the music completely inaudible by that time, Daniele Faccio said.

Light reversal

But Faccio and his colleagues realized that if Rayleigh's predictions held true, the same effect would occur in other types of waves, such as light waves.

Light travels much, much faster than sound, at 670 million mph (1.1 billion km/h). And the wavelengths themselves are tiny, meaning the time reversal can be demonstrated in a normal-size room.

The researchers were also interested in studying this idea because they were developing ultra-high-speed cameras that could peer around corners, and the phenomenon could affect their algorithms.

There was just one problem with testing Rayleigh's prediction with light:

Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.

To create a faster-than-light source, the team used a strange phenomenon called illumination fronts, which had previously been described in a series of fascinating thought experiments.

The trick behind illumination fronts is that, while an image may be traveling faster than light, the photons themselves never exceed light speed.

Here's how Illumination fronts work.

Imagine taking a laser pointer and flicking the point across a vast and distant wall.

While the photons traveling from the laser pointer to the wall are moving at their ordinary speed, because the light hits the wall at an angle, the dot on the wall (the illumination front) always moves faster than that.

Source

Freezing photons in midair

Next, however, the team had to find some way to capture the speedy paths of images as they zoomed across a wall.

"The key piece of equipment was the camera that allows us to essentially freeze light in motion," Faccio told Live Science.

How To Freeze Light

Physicist Matt Sellars' decelerated laser pulses shine the way to quantum computers

To catch time reversal in the act, the team created an illumination front by projecting a single line of light on a screen and moving that line across the screen faster than the speed of light.

At the same time, they captured the reflected light in motion using a super-high-speed camera. The camera snapped photos in a few picoseconds, or trillionths of a second, during which time photons travel just a few feet.

Sure enough, the camera captured the line on the wall moving in the opposite direction from the way they moved the line, as if it had traveled backward in time.

Self-annihilating twins

In a second experiment, the team verified an even more bizarre effect, called pair creation and annihilation.

(Robert Nemiroff, a physicist at Michigan Technological University, predicted this effect for astronomical objects in a study posted online in May 2015 in the preprint journal arXiv - How Superluminal Motion can Lead to Backward Time Travel.)

Faccio and his colleagues had an illumination front travel across a curved screen.

As the speed of the projected lines exceeded light speed, a pair of lines was created, and the two lines moved away from each other. Using a different curvature, the pair of lines moved toward each other, merged and then annihilated each other, the researchers reported Friday (April 15) in the journal Science Advances (Observation of Image Pair Creation and Annihilation from Superluminal Scattering Sources).

The findings may have implications for the researchers' corner-peering cameras. This kind of "supersight" requires scientists to analyze the paths that light particles take as they bounce and scatter off various objects.

Normally, light travels so fast that, to the human eye, the light coming from many different locations seems to appear instantaneously, making it impossible for the eye to resolve these different light paths and "see" behind corners.

But because high-speed cameras can capture the light in motion, researchers can reconstruct the shape of objects that might not be in the immediate line of sight. However, the mathematical calculation of these paths would need to account for the possibility that some of the light rays they see are time-reversed, because they are coming from an illumination front, Faccio said.

The new findings apply to any type of wave, Faccio said.

For instance, there may be certain instances when a seismic wave bounces off a slanted piece of rock deep below Earth's surface, pointing to earthquake activity in one direction, when, in fact, the temblor occurred in the opposite direction, Faccio said.

The new paper also has some other interesting implications, said Robert Nemiroff, who was not involved in the current study.

"I am not sure that either Lord Rayleigh nor [the paper's authors] were aware that sonic booms are the sound equivalent of illumination-front pair-creation events," Nemiroff told Live Science in an email.

"With light, you first see a flash when a pair event is created, but with sound, you hear a boom.

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resconarchive · 6 years

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prinxess's rescreatu rant

Hey all (+Riyo), it's prinxess. I found this blog today, which naturally means I spent the next 5 hours flipping through the archive lol. This was supposed to be a short post but plans never go as expected (Warning: this is LONG). If you know me, you’ve probably seen me try to talk about this stuff in the SB—which rarely goes well, haha. I’m going to word vomit on three main things: Res’s “first come, first serve” issue, Staff/ShoutBox Culture, and my own mistakes.

This isn’t Voice of God. I’m just a flawed 20-year-old who feels compelled articulate her thoughts at least once somewhere.

I accept responsibility for what’s written below.

1. Early Birds Get the Worm

Nice names are Res’s lifeblood. The aim of the game is to accumulate as many as you can. It didn't start out that way but that’s what it's become; it's human nature to want what your peers want. We enjoy having valuable things—the proof is in the pixels. But LOL good names are now worth 1B tu? This is why people are so upset with the site. If you made an account in 2006, quickly hatched three creatu named Diamond, Emerald, and Sapphire, and didn't log in again until now, your account would be worth more than someone who joined a year ago but has put in hundreds of hours into the site.

1B is pretty abstract, so I'll offer a cold splash of in-game reality. 700M = $100

Many of Rescreatu’s issues writhe around one malignant crux: its “first come, first serve” groundwork. Meaning, if your account isn’t old enough to be sent off to grade school, then you are out of luck. With everything. If you weren’t there when you could fish tier-1 names from the Atquateen Forest, if you weren’t there during the mass graveyard purges, if you weren’t smart enough to buy valuable names en masse for cheap from naive tweens 8 years ago, you’re out of luck. Unless Mr. Moneybags disembowels him/herself into your hands, you will never measure up to the sheer wealth of a select few old users (Gunmetal, Fleur, etc).

The visible wealth disparity is unreal. It’s kind of cute—there’s this ritual where when a newbie appears in the SB, older users flood them with tu and lovely creatu because they know baby bambi can’t make it on their own in modern Res. But what about the invisible users? The 99% who never set foot in the SB? Imagine you’re twelve, creating an account for the first time. You’re given XYZtu (aka not enough) to start off with. Hatching pets is fun. You like finding clothes for your avatar in the trash. A while later, you become interested in buying more creatu, so you fiddle around with the Creatu Search. And... you realize that the only good rwns are in the 20M+ range.

Actually no—a few weeks ago, a user called prinxess went through the entire directory, cleaned out most lower-priced RWNs, and stuck them in her shop at mark-up. But hey, she left “Blisters” and “Introspective” for you.

There’s nothing to do on Rescreatu except lord your cool names over other users. Nothing else... except... wait. Isn’t the Kir Quest about colors, not names? Which brings me to my next point. Years ago, blondes were worth 700k, and albinos 3M. Players back then threw these cheap creatu at Kir and rode the Uldavian Express to higher Rounds at mach speed (there are 5 Rounds now. each need an additional 120 creatu/points to access). Nowadays, albinos are no longer stocked in ranchers—period. I’m talking chimbies and meragons, not even seasonals. To use myself as an example, I restarted Kir a month ago (I was only at 25 points, Round 1). I’ll be the first to admit I wasn’t being 100% efficient with my tu, but within a few days, I managed to add an additional 23 creatu to that number. At the cost of nearly one billion tu. 95% of which went towards beans.

If you’re a newbie with a dream of earning a Cyancu Nest, you need to give Kir 180 creatu total. That isn’t just hard—it’s straight-up impossible. From a cost/benefit standpoint, if you do not already have a substantial amount of Kir points, do not touch the Quest. Instead, buy the prize shop items from other users.

Because, let’s do some math. 180 (creatu) x 7,800,000 (price per bean) = 1,404,000,000tu.

I swear on every god out there that, overall, you will not just be spending 7.8M per creatu.

Cyancu eggs are selling for 500M each/1.5B for a nest, pretty close to that mythical 1,404,000,000 number. Just buy the egg.

A staff member once told me, “The Kir Quest is supposed to be hard.” Fair enough. The original purpose of the Quest was to fix Res’s overpopulation problem. Make higher colors valuable again. But now we’ve swung hard towards creatu extinction. The fix is relatively simple. Have Kir ask for blondes/albinos less often. Or increase the likelihood of hatching colors. Should be a simple coding tweak.

Side-note: With beans having become an integral part of Rescreatu’s ONLY real continuous Quest, why are they still cash shop items? People love to tout “but the site needs money to run”. How about put out a better product instead of squeezing users with Stockholm Syndrome/a gambling addiction out of more pennies? Actually, not pennies, it’s serious cash. The next promo is $100 for 3 retired CS eggs—a promo which was supposed to be in December, but moved because the higher ups thought users would be too strapped for cash during Christmas.

2. Staff/Culture

Hopelessness makes the newer users leave. Staff corruption poisons the rest. I’m not involved in current Rescreatu politics, but in the past it absolutely was a thing. Even with generally loved and respected staff members.

I don’t want to disclose too much information, but since I’m old and weary, I’ll say that (without asking for it) a substantial boon was thrown my way because I was friendly with a member of staff. They are still highly regarded within the community.

14BM was unabashedly shady. One day, I announced I was selling a name on the SB and got in touch with a buyer. During our back-and-forth rmailing, 14BM rmailed me to say one of us had “accidentally hit the report button” which pointed her to our conversation. She warned me the other user was ripping me off, and that she could give me a better offer. Not very professional behavior, in my honest opinion.

Way back when, BillyBob was abusing glitches.

A name appeared in anon-staff’s Showroom one hot second after the person it belonged to was banned for “using a bot to find eggs.” Anon-staff had previously asked if they’d ever sell the name and they had said no. Shady.

Real talk. A staff member told me they don’t even care if you use bots, just as long as you don’t find enough seasonal eggs to ruin the market. I think anything above 40 is considered suspicious. Nevermind if you actually have no life and want to search for eggs for 48 hours straight.

There were way more corruption incidents, but those were so long ago I barely remember them. As for current staff, I can’t speak for them. Honestly, I can’t tell who most people are anymore because of all the username switching lol. There’s this ridiculous implicit rule of “don’t ask what someone’s username used to be” around Res. Like hello? That makes no sense. Not only do they retain their unique pets, but really, if someone hated you, a simple change of username isn’t going to make them suddenly forget who you are. Similarly, the whole idea of a new username being “a new start” for the user is frankly hilarious. Especially when you act no different.

That’s unfortunately just the start of my issue with Res’s “nice” culture. I’ll call it by another name: suck-up culture. It’s this omnipresent force of saccharine sweetness that’s nearly alive from how many people are hooked up into it. Plenty of users are genuinely nice, I won’t knock that. But damn, when a staff member/older user/wealthbag comes on the SB? It’s a vicious competition to prove how close they are are with that member. Immediately, there are “glomps” and “huggles” and “we’re married!/best friends” as if they actually give a shit about the other person. You do not. I know you do not. Everyone knows you do not. You’re just trying to get free things—and hey, it’s not a bad move, since those users are generally the gifting type. Oh. The cringiest thing is when a fan gives a popular user a cheap present, so the popular user will feel obliged to give them something in return—hopefully a better something. Machiavelli must be rolling in his grave.

This sugary behavior has somehow infected staff as well. I find it doubly disgusting because I can’t even call them out on it.

“<3 oh sweetheart, just so you know, what you’re doing is called spam. [link to rules] please take a look!! :333 ^_^”

“ *pops in* haiiiii guys, sorry to bump in but could you please take this convo to rmail? :3 *hugs* squeeeee <333 *hopes you dont hate me* ”

Like, fucking Christ. I can feel their phantom arms around me in my sleep. Can anyone speak normally anymore? Does everything need to be qualified with butterflies, sunshine, and overtures of love?

Back to the subject of staff... that issue is multifaceted. First, it’s a weirdly cyclical thing. Notice how newly chosen staff are almost always friends with current staff? I don’t believe I’ve ever seen some anon that’s never visited the SB become staff purely on merit (save for artists/programmers). But I could be wrong. Anyway, users inducted into staff are usually already one of Res’s wealthy elite. I can only speak for the trend I’ve noticed over the years, but A LOT of people become staff as a status symbol. Some also do it because they’re invested in the site and want to make it better. The two aren’t mutually exclusive. You can want to help while liking the boost in popularity at the same time. The real issue with staff is how they are compensated. Getting paid in credits (cash points?) actively increases the wealth disparity in the site. There’s a difference between giving someone 100 dollars versus a handful of credits. If someone handed you a hundred dollars, would you use it for rent or on some virtual name tags? Without this choice, staff are essentially forced into one course of action: buy credit shop items, put these items in their merchant shop, sell them to users, rake in tu. Or just sell cp for tu.

Rescreatu doesn’t use their staff properly. I’m referring to writers and artists. There are hundreds of wearable items available, but dressing up an avatar to look forum-fancy isn’t the purpose of a pet site. It’s a nice feature. But I didn’t join Rescreatu so I could play dress-up, I joined for the pets, for the battle arena, for the story of it all. Writers, I feel, are the most wasted of all. Does anyone actually read the stories in the books? Does anyone buy books, even? Res should take their talent and invest in proper story lines. They have six writers right now. Come on. Put up a good kidnapping site-wide story involving Xoria and Loyna. Get a competition between Scria users and Reiflem users going. Maybe the story could be Quest-style, with the users voting on how the story moves with their tu. Do something!

...Because this site also needs a tu sink. Desperately. Contrary to popular belief, the Kir Quest isn’t a tu sink, it vacuums money up to the top dogs of Rescreatu. You buy 10 beans—where are you getting these beans? More than likely, it’s from a staff member selling 70 of them in their shop. IRL right now there are 4 users selling beans: Feather x34, Isolation x30, Umbreon420 x1, Phos x36. Nothing against these users—in fact, I like them, but do you notice a trend? What do staff do with all this tu? They buy names at premium prices because they can afford to.

Q: Wait, prinx. If you just paid real money, you could have lots of tu too! A: My honor code forbids me from validating freemium games

Q: But, prinx. Why don’t you just become staff? A: I tried when I was 13 but they didn’t accept me ): Probably for good reason.

It’s shocking that the stock market hasn’t been removed/tweaked yet. It shouldn’t be possible to buy 50,000 stocks of FAS for 400k on Sunday, and sell that for 20M one week later. This is another reason why names are considered the real currency on Rescreatu. Their value increases along with the inflation. It’s the only safe investment you can make.

3. Me

So, my long-winded rant is out of the way. Above, I mentioned I’d like to apologize for myself, so here I go. For context, these past few months I’ve been trying to get rid of my RWNs through forum auctions. In the latest thread, I stuck in an umbrella clause basically saying that I reserved the right to pull whatever bullshit I wanted, which I used, without warning, to tack 1.2B Autobuy options to the names. Half my reason was I was being egged on by a friend to do it. Half was because I just didn’t care. Never in my wildest dreams did I even imagine one person would actually go for it, let alone 3. When I opened the thread the morning after, I felt dread. My actions understandably upset quite a few people. I acknowledge that what I did was unprofessional. I regret it, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson.

In general, I’ve spent my recent years on Rescreatu being rude and abrasive. Trying to tie 14 year old staff in logic knots, picking at overly sensitive members, engaging trolls, the works. I’ve been throwing angsty melodrama around like glow-sticks at an EDM concert, and it isn’t fair to the newer members who have no memory of Res’s past.

This post clocks in at 2.5k words. The only reason I’ve written so much is because Rescreatu means/meant so much to me. For all its faults, Res somehow just works. Maybe because it encourages addictive behavior. Maybe because of the community. Whatever it is, it’s helped the site escape multiple waves of peril that would’ve killed any other. For that it deserves some applause.

If you want to contact me, rmail me or email me at [email protected]. I don't bite

Peace.

#rescreatu #submission

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un-enfant-immature · 4 years

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Reaction Engines’ Mach 5 engine is just the tip of the new aerospace boom

Imagine a hypersonic passenger aircraft that would cut the journey time between London and New York to around two hours. At Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound, the aircraft would complete a trip across the Atlantic in around 120 minutes. Mach 5 is more than twice as fast as the cruising speed of Concorde and over 50% faster than the SR-71 Blackbird – the world’s fastest jet-engine powered aircraft. A flight across the Pacific would take roughly three hours. Flight times from London to Sydney could be 80% shorter. Who needs Elon Musk?

Reaching these speeds would require an aircraft engine that has never previously existed. But last week, the world got a glimpse of a new future via a project which has been germinating for 30 years.

Reaction Engines was founded in 1989 by three propulsion engineers from Rolls Royce: Alan Bond, Richard Varvill and John Scott Scott. Their idea was that in order for an engine to reach hypersonic speeds, the air going into it would have to be rapidly cooled, otherwise the engine would melt. Reaction’s breakthrough was inventing a “precooler” or heat exchanger which can take the air down to minus 150 degrees centigrade in less than a 20th of a second.

These ultra-lightweight “heat exchangers” would enable aircraft to fly over five times the speed of sound in the atmosphere. Thus the SABRE – Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine – was born. The Sabre engine “breathes” air to make 20 per cent of the journey to orbit, before switching to rocket mode to complete the trip.

Last week, Reaction Engines passed a significant milestone. It successfully tested its innovative precooler at airflow temperature conditions representing Mach 5.

The ground-based test at the Colorado Air and Space Port in the US, saw the precooler successfully operate at temperatures of 420ᵒC (~788ᵒF) – matching the thermal conditions corresponding to Mach 3.3 flight.

But this technology wouldn’t just be applicable to hypersonic flight. The precooler technology, developed by Reaction Engines, would significantly enhance the performance of existing jet engine technology, along with applications in automotive, aerospace, energy and industrial processes. Reaction Engines has attracted development funding from the British government, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the European Space Agency. It’s also raised over £100m from public and private sources and has secured investment from BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce and Boeing’s venture capital arm HorizonX. Reaction is expected to start building and testing a demonstrator engine next year.

The success of Reaction Engines to date is a sign that the ‘AerospaceTech’ sector is now booming. It is most certainly not alone.

Last month, Boeing and the UK government launched a £2m accelerator program to look for new innovations in this area. Boeing’s HorizonX is backing the initiative.

#TechCrunch

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endenogatai · 4 years

Text

Reaction Engines’ Mach 5 engine is just the tip of the new aerospace boom

Reaching these speeds would require an aircraft engine that has never previously existed. But last week, the world got a glimpse of a new future via a project which has been germinating for 30 years.

Last week, Reaction Engines passed a significant milestone. It successfully tested its innovative precooler at airflow temperature conditions representing Mach 5.

The success of Reaction Engines to date is a sign that the ‘AerospaceTech’ sector is now booming. It is most certainly not alone.

Last month, Boeing and the UK government launched a £2m accelerator program to look for new innovations in this area. Boeing’s HorizonX is backing the initiative.

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425 https://ift.tt/32doDO0 via IFTTT

#IFTTT #RSSMix.com Mix ID 8204425

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scepticaladventure · 7 years

Text

15 Gravity and Inertia 26Aug17

Introduction

This is a blog essay about two of the most fundamental aspects of the Universe – gravity and inertia. It is written to provoke some fresh thinking in an area of physics that I think has worked itself into a morass of complicated rubbish. Gravity and inertia are fundamentally important but still quite mysterious.

Three centuries after Sir Isaac Newton argued for the existence of absolute space and time, Ernst Mach disagreed (as had Bishop Berkley previously). Mach did not agree that there was an absolute reference frame. He argued that a body only has motion relative to other bodies. He also noted that inertial affects only arose if the body was accelerating or rotating with respect to the “fixed stars” in the heavens above. Mach’s line of reasoning led to speculation that inertia itself was a purely relative phenomenon and that the stars “up there” had something to do with the manifestation of inertia “down here”.

Quote from Robert H Dicke: “It is interesting that only two ideas concerning the nature of space have dominated our thinking since the time of Descartes. According to one of these pictures, space is an absolute physical structure with properties of its own. This picture can be traced from Descartes’ vortices through the absolute space of Newton, to the ether theories of the 19th century.

The contrary view - that the geometrical and inertial properties of space are meaningless for an empty space, that the physical properties of space have their origin in the matter contained therein, and that the only meaningful motion of a particle is motion relative to other matter in the universe has never found its complete expression in a physical theory. This picture is also old and can be traced from the writings of Bishop Berkeley to those of Ernst Mach.

These ideas have found a limited expression in General Relativity, but it must be admitted that, although in General Relativity spatial geometries are affected by mass distributions, the geometry is not uniquely specified by the distribution. It has not yet been possible to specify boundary conditions on the field equations of General Relativity which would bring the theory into accord with Mach's Principle.“

Thought Experiments

Thought experiments are a wonderful thing. They can take us wherever our minds can wonder or wander. They cost very little. They can enlarge our thinking and discipline it at the same time. And they are useful for conversations.

But before I present a few thought experiments let me propose a new (?) scientific principle.

One of the things we can observe about our physical universe is that physical relationships seem to be consistent. Nature is not capricious. Things do not change without reason. Physical laws apply equally well “here” as “over there” and they also hold true over time. They do not hold one day and not hold another. If two systems are exactly identical then (apart from quantum fluctuations) they tend to remain identical.

This suggests a Principle of Consistencyv (PoC). It could be stated in many ways, such as:

Identical physical systems will remain identical unless there is a reason for at least one them to change; and .

The laws of physics will affect identical systems in identical circumstances in identical ways.

1. The Cannon on the Mountain

Many people misunderstand what is going on when a satellite orbits a large object like a planet or star. When asked to explain why astronauts in an orbiting spacecraft experience weightlessness, many reply “because there is no gravity in space”. Which of course misunderstands that gravity is holding the spacecraft in its orbit.

Galileo’s explanatory thought experiment still works well to explain what is going on. Imagine a very high mountain on the equator and a powerful cannon atop the mountain with its muzzle pointing horizontally, aimed towards the west. Fire a shell and watch its trajectory. The shell gradually curves down and strikes the earth somewhere west. But the earth is curving also. If you fire the cannon hard enough, the shell will sail over the horizon and as it falls the earth will keep on curving away beneath it. Get the horizontal speed just right and (ignoring air friction) the shell could go all around the earth, over and over again. Continually falling in vertical free fall under the influence of gravity, but constantly missing the earth.

Gravity is pulling the shell downwards. However, the inertia of the shell is trying to keep it going in a straight line. If gravity were suddenly to cease, the shell trajectory would become a straight line and the shell would fly off at a tangent to its previous orbit, like mud off a bicycle wheel. If inertia were suddenly to cease, the shell would hit the earth quite quickly.

So that is why astronauts experience weightlessness. They are actually in continuous free-fall. It is as if they are inside an elevator on which the cable has been cut. The only reason that they do not hit the earth with fatal consequences is that they are going sideways so fast they keep missing it.

The speed at which the orbit is stable strikes a balance between the gravitational forces on the shell and the inertial properties of the shell. Both are proportional to the mass of the shell, so this orbiting speed is independent of the mass of the shell. The speed at which the orbit persists depends only on the mass of the earth, the radius of the orbit and the gravitational constant G.

Simple as this thought experiment is, there are two things about it that should not be taken for granted. Why does the earth pull down on the shell? And why does the shell want to travel in a straight line out to space somewhere?

2. Newton’s Bucket

Sir Isaac Newton invited his readers to imagine a bucket filled with water and suspended by a long cord which is twisted round and round quite a few times and then let go (see quote below). The bucket starts to spin faster and faster. The water in the bucket will start to spin as well. Slowly at first and not nearly as fast as the bucket, but gradually catching up. The surface of the water will take on a curved shape as the water tries to climb up the sides of the bucket. (An upward opening circular paraboloid). Now stop the bucket spinning. For a while at least the water will keep on spinning and its surface will stay curved. But the degree of curvature does not have a good relationship to the motion of the bucket. Newton concluded that what was relevant in the behaviour of this system was not the motion of the water with respect to the bucket, but rather to “absolute space”.

“If a vessel, hung by a long cord, is so often turned about that the cord is strongly twisted, then filled with water, and held at rest together with the water; after, by the sudden action of another force, it is whirled about in the contrary way, and while the cord is untwisting itself, the vessel continues for some time this motion; the surface of the water will at first be plain, as before the vessel began to move; but the vessel by gradually communicating its motion to the water, will make it begin sensibly to revolve, and recede by little and little, and ascend to the sides of the vessel, forming itself into a concave figure...This ascent of the water shows its endeavour to recede from the axis of its motion; and the true and absolute circular motion of the water, which is here directly contrary to the relative, discovers itself, and may be measured by this endeavour. ... And therefore, this endeavour does not depend upon any translation of the water in respect to ambient bodies, nor can true circular motion be defined by such translation. ... but relative motions...are altogether destitute of any real effect. ...It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space in which these motions are performed, do by no means come under the observations of our senses. Isaac Newton; Principia, Book 1: Scholium Translation by Andrew Motte 1846.

Philosophers have often argued whether there is any such thing as “absolute space”. In the 17th century René Descartes, supported (in part) by Gottfried Leibniz, held that empty space is a metaphysical impossibility. When one speaks of the space between things one is actually making reference to the things, and not to some entity that stands between them.

3. The Foucault Pendulum

The Foucault pendulum is named after the French physicist Léon Foucault, and is a simple device conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. While it had long been known that the Earth rotates, the introduction of the Foucault pendulum in 1851 was the first simple proof of the rotation of the earth in an easy-to-see experiment.

Foucault pendulums are popular displays in science museums and universities. In essence, the pendulum is a weight at the end of a long wire attached to a point above in such as way that the weight can swing in any direction. If such a pendulum is set in motion, it does not just go back and forth. The plane of such motion can be seen to slowly turn around, i.e. it precesses.

The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later, Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28-kg brass-coated lead bob with a 67-m-long wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris. The plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise approximately 11.3° per hour, making a full circle in approximately 31.8 hours.

At either the North Pole or South Pole, the plane of oscillation of a pendulum remains fixed relative to the distant masses of the universe while Earth rotates underneath it, taking one sidereal day to complete a rotation. So, relative to Earth, the plane of oscillation of a Foucault pendulum at the North Pole undergoes a full clockwise rotation in a 24 hour period. A pendulum at the South Pole rotates counterclockwise by the same extent in the same length of time.

4. The Ball and Ring

Imagine a massive ball surrounded by a rubber ring in an otherwise empty universe. Now set the ring revolving with respect to the ball. Which is spinning – the ring or the ball? There are several possible answers:

The ring

The ball

Both of them

We can’t say unless we surround the system with some other matter

We can’t say unless we put the system into the context of an external universe.

If the ball is spinning then it might display some inertial effects. For example, it might bulge in the middle. Or a bucket of water placed on one of its poles might develop a concave surface. If such effects are present then that could be taken as evidence that the ball was spinning. Conversely, if the ring displays some stretching then that would be evidence that it is the ring that is spinning.

Can we assume that if the ring and the ball are not displaying any inertial effects then this is proof that they are not spinning? No we cannot. We have no evidence or proof that inertial effects would be present in an otherwise empty universe.

In an otherwise empty universe, a system with the ring spinning around the ball is identical to a system with the ball spinning inside the ring. Under a Principle of Consistency (PoC), there should not be a capricious difference in the state of the system. Outcome 1 should be just as possible as outcome 2. But the PoC also says that the outcome should be well determined.

Outcome 3 has superficial merit. At least it is “symmetrical”. But now imagine the ring becoming smaller and smaller until it disappears. Does this leave the ball still displaying some signs of spinning? That would lead to a violation of the PoC when compared to another ball that doesn’t have a ring around it and shows none of the indications that it is spinning.

Outcome 4 introduces an external reference. It could a tiny little bead at some considerable distance away. Position an observer on the ring. If the bead is observed to travel round and round then the observer would conclude that the ring is spinning. The alternative is to assume that the bead is travelling along some enormous circular path at an impossible speed.

If anyone tries to argue that it could be the bead that is travelling and not the ring, thus creating an illusion of rotation for our observer, just conceive of a second ring and ball placed next to the first one, but with a relative rotation in the opposite direction. The same bead cannot create opposite delusions at the same time.

Now place the observer on the ball. If the bead is observed to travel round and round the ball then the observer would conclude that it is the ball is spinning.

This leads us to surmise that if there is an observer on the ring and an observer on the ball, and is there an another observable piece of matter nearby, then the two observers should be able to agree whether it is the ball that is spinning or the bucket.

It is strange, is it not, that such a tiny bead could be so helpful to resolving the situation? And if you do not think it is strange, then conceptually reduce the bead to the size of an electron and place it a million times further away. Keep going until you do find it to be strange.

Outcome 5 is much more familiar. It is our own actual Universe. We can expect observers to be able to agree which part of the ring and ball system is spinning. We can expect that inertial effects will be present. And we can expect that these inertial effects will be consistent with the agreement reached by the observers after observing the external Universe.

But to prefer outcome 5 is to admit that the Universe is somehow a key factor for determining which objects are spinning and which are not, and that the Universe has something to do with the manifestations of behaviors that we call inertial effects.

In other words, we have by logical analysis of a thought experiment arrived at Mach’s Principle.

5. A Rotating Spherical Universe

Now let us do one of those heroic extrapolations that thought experiments lend themselves to. Let us imagine that the whole universe is a sphere and that we are inside it. Can we say if such a universe is rotating or not? Could we even tell one way or the other?

If we put a gyroscope at rest with respect to the rest of this universe, we would not expect it to demonstrate rotational effects, whether or not the Universe itself is rotating.

There may be some possibility that the spherical universe could be rotating in some sense, and the gyroscope is rotating with it in perfect harmony. Then we would not expect any rotational effects either. The only surprise would be if the gyroscope was at rest to its universe and did show signs of rotation.

Now assume that this particular universe has all its mass (except the observer) in its outermost shell. The Shell Theorem tells us that the net gravity on a particle anywhere inside such an arrangement is zero. The gravitational pull is the same in all directions.

Would this affect our thinking in any way? If inertia were somehow connected to gravity, then the apparent absence of gravity might suggest that inertia would also be absent.

Now suppose that the universe consists of concentric shells of matter and consider an observer somewhere inside, at radius r from the centre. The Shell Theorem suggests that the net gravitational effect from all the matter of radius greater than r is zero. If gravity were somehow responsible for inertia then we might suppose that only the matter situated at radius less than r is relevant. But then, by making r smaller and smaller, we would conclude that not only is there no large scale gravity in such a universe, there is no large scale inertia either.

All in all the idea that the some sort of net gravitational effect from the universe as a whole is somehow responsible for the locally observable phenomena that we call inertia is not proving entirely helpful.

Mach’s Universal Reference Frame

In describing a physical system or experiment it is usually simpler and less confusing to reference all time and position measurements to a reference frame in which distances and directions can be well defined and in which all the clocks are synchronized.

(A reference frame that makes the description of physics very complicated is one which is accelerating or rotating with respect to the fixed stars. Even worse would be an accelerating and rotating frame in which the degree of acceleration, the speed of rotation and/or the axis of rotation are not constant either.)

Sir Isaac Newton found it convenient to describe his observations and experiments as if there was an absolute reference frame for space and time that all observers could agree upon.

The German physicist/philosopher Ernst Mach (after whom the speed of sound in air gets its name) argued that a body only has motion relative to other bodies. He also noted that inertial affects would be apparent if the reference frame being used was accelerating or rotating with respect to the “fixed stars” in the heavens above. He argued that everything was relative. Einstein acknowledged that these arguments influenced his development of Special Relativity.

Mach would have been very familiar with the17th century debate about the nature of space and also the Foucault pendulum. He opposed the idea of absolute space as such, preferring instead to suggest that the properties of physical systems are relative to the matter constituting the universe as a whole.

“Newton's experiment with the rotating vessel of water simply informs us that the relative rotation of the water with respect to the sides of the vessel produces no noticeable centrifugal forces, but that such forces are produced by its relative rotations with respect to the mass of the earth and other celestial bodies.” — Ernst Mach, as quoted by L. Bouquiaux in Leibniz, p. 104”

“When we say that a body preserves unchanged its direction and velocity in space, our assertion is nothing more or less than an abbreviated reference to the entire universe.” — Ernst Mach; as quoted by Ciufolini and Wheeler: Gravitation and Inertia, p. 387”

When we use a reference frame to describe a physical system, the physics is only simple if we make sure it neither accelerates or rotates with respect to the “fixed stars”.

Is it just a coincidence that the reference frame in which a Foucault Pendulum does not rotate, accelerometers read zero, Coriolis effects disappear, and the water in Newton’s bucket stays flat, is always a reference frame in which there is no relative rotation to the “fixed stars”?

Ernst Mach thought not. The correspondence is much too exact and consistent and omnipresent to be a mere coincidence. Mach speculated that the distant stars must somehow affect or dictate the phenomenon we call inertia. A contemporary of Mach is reported to have said: “If the tramcar stops suddenly it is the distant stars that throw you down!”

Einstein called this line of reasoning “Mach's Principle.” He tried to incorporate the principle into his theories of relativity. He thought he had some success when Lense and Thirring showed that Special Relativity implied that massive spinning objects must drag inertial frames around with them to a small extent. However, the Lense-Thirring frame dragging effect is only apparent close to massive objects that are spinning very rapidly, and it does not seem to be suitable candidate for the uniform appearance of inertial affects throughout the whole Universe.

Later on Einstein thought he could incorporate Mach’s Principle into cosmological models based upon General Relativity by applying it as some sort of boundary condition for the solutions of his equations on a cosmological scale. However, eventually Einstein himself concluded that he had been unsuccessful. Modern cosmologists are divided on the question of whether General Relativity offers a satisfactory explanation for inertia.

Does Gravity Cause Inertia?

Mach thought there must be an interaction throughout the whole Universe that affected all matter and gave it its inertial properties. The obvious candidate for this mysterious relationship was gravity, because gravity is known to affect the whole Universe.

However, as shown by the Foucault pendulum there is an obvious and fatal issue with this. The back and forth swing of the pendulum is clearly driven by the gravity of the Earth, but the round and round precession of the plane of the pendulum’s swing ignores the presence of the Earth altogether.

There is also the problem of action at a distance. If a spacecraft (say) tries to accelerate, then most of the Universe is many, many light years away. So any signal, even at the speed of light, between the spacecraft and the rest of the Universe would take eons to come back again. Unless we are prepared to admit instantaneous action over almost infinite distances then the rest of the Universe must be condemned to be a spectator of events.

The Fabric of Spacetime

Perhaps it is not the distant galaxies that are relevant to this issue, but rather something that is closer to hand – something perhaps left over from the creation, evolution and/or expansion of the Universe?

In Einstein’s General Relativity, one massive body does not interact gravitationally with another by exchanging gravitons with it, or by any other process that involves to-ing and fro-ing between the two massive objects. Instead each body affects the spacetime around it, and each massive body reacts to the spacetime that it finds itself in.

If this is good enough for gravity, why should it not also apply to inertia?

What if a massive body acquires its inertial properties from the spacetime around it? What if the inertial properties result from attempts by a massive body to break two simple rules – don’t accelerate relative to the surrounding spacetime, and don’t change your rate of spin either, unless you “buy” the change by absorbing or giving up some energy to something else?

This line of thought leads me to make a heretical suggestion. Gravity and inertia might not be consequences of the mass of material objects at all. It might be the other way around. Mass might be a secondary phenomenon, not an intrinsic fundamental property of material objects. In other words, the property that we call mass might be a manifestation of the way that gravity and inertia affects matter.

Or, to put it another way – without gravity and inertia, a material object would not be able to exhibit those properties to which we have given the name “mass”.

Some readers may find this idea perplexing, other might find it intriguing – many will find it discomfiting, silly or perhaps even annoying. It would be a perfectly understandable human reaction to immediately adjudge it to be nonsense. Apologies to the latter group and thank you to the former for being open to strange new ideas.

What Constitutes the “Fixed Stars?”

What is the frame of reference in which centrifugal and Coriolis forces vanish, and Newton's dynamics applies in the simplest way?

Most descriptions of the meaning of an inertial reference frame point out that such a reference stem is not accelerating or rotating with respect to the “fixed stars” or “distant galaxies” or “mean rest frame of the Universe.”

But this warrants closer examination. What does “relative to the distant masses of the universe” mean exactly? It is often claimed: “Observationally, we find that a Newtonian or inertial frame is one in which the distant galaxies are not rotating.”

But this sentence has never been thoroughly tested. It is therefore an assertion and an assumption. For example, when it mentions galaxies, should it say the distant galaxies, or should it say “the Milky Way”?

Until the 1920’s the “rest of the Universe was assumed” to be synonymous with the “fixed stars” in the starry firmament all around. In the 1920s, Edwin Hubble showed that a whole lot of small “fuzzy nebulae” appearing in the heavens above were no part of the Milky Way at all. They were in fact separate galaxies from the Milky Way, and that our own galaxy is just one galaxy amongst countless others. This was momentous news to Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein and everyone else.

The concept of “the fixed stars” then became complicated because the Milky Way, which dominates the heavens above, is not fixed relative to the rest of the Universe, but is rotating slowly within it.

All the other galaxies are also on the move as well – mostly away from us, but with a variety of sideways motions as well. Members of the local group of galaxies are in fact getting nearer to the Milky Way at an appreciable rate.

In everyday practice our own Milky Way usually makes a very good reference frame. It takes about 240 million years for our Sun to complete a galactic rotation. The practical difference between using the Milky Way as a reference frame and using the “mean rest frame of distant galaxies”, or the Cosmic Microwave Background, is almost immeasurably small.

For most purposes no-one even bothers to ask whether the local galaxy or the distant galaxies is the better reference frame. A century ago astronomers just assumed the former was true. Now they seem to have seamlessly switched to assuming that the mean rest frame of galaxies in general is the most obvious reference frame to use as the background non-inertial reference frame.

There does not seem to have been any discussion, debate, testing or argument about this big change in assumptions. And not a word of explanation.

The concept of a “Universal Mean Rest Frame” shifted one again with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This radiation is arriving in our neighbourhood in a highly uniform and isotropic way. The CMB is now assumed to be the obvious “reference frame for the Universe as a whole”, and is also assumed to be synonymous with the “mean rest frame” for the whole Universe.

It is a pity assumptions about what is the actual correct inertial reference frame in different parts of our galaxy or elsewhere in the universe are made so readily and without much discussion, debate or testing. We may be missing something very fundamental.

Is Our Universe Rotating?

Our actual Universe is almost evenly filled with galaxies and gases and dust and travelling energy in the form of photons and neutrinos. We do not know if it has an edge or not. All our experiential evidence about the distant universe arrives in the form of electromagnetic waves, neutrinos and (one day perhaps) gravitational fluctuations. At any one instant what we are seeing is the combined effect of “light” arriving from concentric shells around us, with the light from shells further away being older in proportion to its distance, and hence reflecting an earlier stage in the evolution of the Universe.

In all of this information, there does not appear to be any macroscopic effects of universal rotation. No disc like flattening. No concentration of matter along an axis of rotation – like tea leaves in a mug. No concentration of matter in a distant ring around the cosmic microwave background.

The Big Bang theory imagines that the Universe expanded and then collapsed and then expanded again. Was it rotating when the last expansion started?

Some cosmologists have suggested that if the Universe expanded exceedingly rapidly in its early phase, any initial rotation will have by now been dissipated to almost nothing. However, I am not sure this is a good argument since it is reasonable to surmise that there would still be some evidence of the basic rotation in the gross distribution of matter within the Universe.

So it seems safe to assume that there is no gross rotation in the Universe as a whole, or if there it would not show up anyway.

The Physics of a Lonely Spiral Galaxy

Imagine a universe where a big bang resulted in just one lonely spiral galaxy, surrounded by a huge shell of dust and other baryonic matter, and that the galaxy is spinning slowly with respect to the shell of dust all around it.

Imagine that shell is expanding. Light emitted by the shell takes longer and longer to reach the galaxy. To observers on the galaxy the shell will become dimmer and dimmer, less and less dense, and colder and colder. Eventually, the shell will more or less disappear.

Now the lonely galaxy is turning silently in space, all by itself.

What then is the best reference frame to use for analysing the dynamics of the spiral galaxy? Is it one that is fixed relative to the now invisible surrounding shell of dust? Or might it be a reference frame that is somehow aligned to the galaxy itself?

The most promising way to answer this question is to work out which reference frame gives the simplest platform for understanding the dynamics of the galaxy as a whole. In general, nature prefers simple solutions rather than elaborate and implausible explanations with a whole lot of extra variables. (Occam’s Razor). Students of physics certainly do!

Unfortunately we do not have a lonely spiral galaxy to examine in isolation. But we do have a perfectly good spiral galaxy close at hand. In fact we live in one. Plus there are plenty of other spiral galaxies quite nearby.

Rotational Speeds in Spiral Galaxies

Using a reference frame aligned to the cosmic microwave background does not give simple physics for spiral galaxies. All the stars in all the arms of all such galaxies appear to be travelling much too fast. Their tangential speeds should decline in direct proportion to the inverse of the square root of their orbital radius. In practice the tangential speeds are observed to hardly decline at all with increasing radius from their galactic centers. The speed of the stars in their orbits remains roughly constant as r increases. Rates of rotation around the relevant galactic cores are very much higher than expected. Up to ten times higher.

The stars should not be where they are. They should be a lot closer to the middle. The galaxies themselves should not exist.

This problem became widely known in the 1970’s and is known as the rotation curve issue.

So what did we do? Did we keep an open mind? No. We immediately assumed there must be a lot of some new exotic dark matter hidden in the halo of spiral galaxies and that the extra gravitational pull from this Cold Dark Matter (CDM) was holding all the rapidly orbiting stars in place.

I think this idea was partly inspired by the fact that the new giant atom smashing machines of that era were frequently discovering new types of sub-atomic particles.

Astronomers leapt to the conclusion that there must be a lot of invisible “dark matter” holding spiral galaxies together. The have been looking for this unknown, exotic, hypothetical “cold dark matter” ever since.

Forty years later we are still looking for any direct evidence at all for any Cold Dark Matter at all. I wonder how many decades of fruitless searching will it take for scientists to start to question their unshakeable belief that “exotic cold dark matter” must be out there somewhere and that its existence is the only possible solution to the rotation curve issue.

The idea of cold dark matter is itself struggling mathematically. According to some calculations the cold dark matter should distributed in one way, and for other calculations it should be distributed in other ways (refer the cuspy halo problem).

An alternative hypothesis, not popular with most astrophysicists, is that gravity itself becomes slightly weaker as the distance scale becomes enormous. (Refer Modified Newtonian dynamics, or MOND for short). The Israeli physicist Modercai Milgrom and a few open minded colleagues persist in putting up this alternative to the cold dark matter hypothesis, and they deserve thanks and respect. Not least because their idea seems to be having considerable explanatory success so far. And also because they show that not all modern scientists are overwhelmed by “groupthink” and the herd instinct.

I suppose many physicists and astronomers are uncomfortable about the idea that so-called physical laws and relationships might not be as immutable as they like to imagine. But it would be nice to think that mankind has become more open to paradigm shifts since the wise men of the 17th century condemned Galileo for his heretical views.

A New Idea to explain the Rotation Curve Problem

In my next post I will suggest a new idea to explain the apparently anomalous orbital speeds for the stars and dust that we can see in nearby spiral galaxies.

It may be not be right but I think it is worth considering. Particularly since it accords with the everyday observations that Einstein dubbed “Mach’s Principle”.

The suggestion is that the orbiting stars are actually exactly in the orbits that accord with Newtonian/Keplerian dynamics. (And I’m being serious here).

The reason why the stars are travelling so fast is that the correct reference frame for analysing their motion is being dragged around by the rotation of their galaxy. Relative to this correct reference frame the stars in the arms of spiral galaxies are travelling at exactly the right Keplerian speed for their particular radii from the centre of their galaxy.

The inertial reference frame dragging is not as fast as the apparent rotation of the stars themselves, but is a compromise between the effects of all the rotating material in the galaxy and the background inertial reference frame that would apply in that part of the Universe if the spiral galaxy were not present.

I call this the Mixed Rotational Reference Frame Effect (MiRFFe). I can call it what I like, because it is my idea (as far as I know).

Yes there is a lot of dark matter in and around a spiral galaxy, but it is normal dark matter like gas, dust and dwarf stars, plus perhaps quite a lot of black holes.

Exotic cold dark matter is not required. Adding a mysterious 33% extra mass to the Universe is not required, necessary, desirable or clever.

Summary

Gravity and Inertia are two absolutely commonplace and fundamental features of our Universe, from the biggest scale imaginable down to the tiniest scale possible. And yet we do not understand them very well. Furthermore, we cannot even explain the orbits of stars in spiral galaxies, including our own Sun in the Milky Way. We’ve missed something. We need to think again.

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epicurioustraveler · 7 years

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March 6th – I sit now beneath the balcony where my Yuneec Breeze lies after an unfortunate crash that most likely ended it’s all too brief life. Roughly 48 hours ago I planned one last flying mission for my drone here in Sevilla before departing to Cordoba, where I wanted to capture some great aerial shots of the famous Mezquita and Cathedral there. The missions we accomplished the night before the crash of the Catedral de Sevilla (uploaded later that night at the hostel) and earlier on Saturday were fantastic. From my viewing screen I had captured excellent footage of Plaza de Espana as the clouds had just broken and the sun was shining brightly onto its impressive tiles and towers. Our second mission of the day, well, it did not go, at all, as planned.

Here is how it unfolded. Upon take off, as the pilot, I had no control. Luckily, the Breeze did rise to its liftoff height of roughly 7′ and that is when all went to hell. The Breeze banked to the right for a split second and then immediately banked to the left at what seemed like Mach 1 (my preset speed was no more than 12 feet per second). It did a semi-circle and approximately 50 meters later it met its demise, slamming into an apartment building wall. Ridding itself of one of its folding legs, it’s undercarriage and the GPS protective cover, it fell violently to a canopy protecting patrons sipping their lattes and eating pastries. As for what remains on the balcony, I wait for the landlord to arrive so I may pick up its remains and properly grant it a worthy burial (in the trivial sense.

My Breeze treated me well, mostly. Only crashing in Ireland (but that may have had more to do with the pints I consumed leading up to that accident) before the horrible mishap on Saturday that in all likelihood has led to its demise.

Update:

March 29th – My Drone is now en route to Atlanta where it will find its final resting place when I return to the states in the coming months.

Purposefully, I never completed and posted my March 6th post (above) for I needed time to properly communicate this story of both a material and human life, as well as human death. So now back to the day the drone would once again be in my possession.

As I sat outside the cafe on March 6th and a mere twenty feet beneath the resting place of my drone, the lady who owned the apartment showed up with her daughter (the one I began having most communications with as she spoke much better English) to let me in. Her daughter was in her early 30’s I imagine and the mother in her late 60’s perhaps. They were quick to apologize to me for their lack of responsiveness and for any inconvenience to me for my having to come back to Seville from Cordoba. I immediately stopped her and said, “Please. You shouldn’t apologize. I was the one that flew my drone into your building and crashed it onto your apartment balcony. Trust me, I am extremely appreciative you are able to come by and help me. Muchas gracias!”

The mother, who I had originally communicated with, offered me an empty smile weighed down by sadness in her eyes. I could read in her body language that she was going through something hard at the moment but obviously unsure of what it was that was depressing her. Quickly discussing something in Spanish, the daughter mentioned that they were in a hurry, as was I. My bus to Malaga was departing at 15:00 (and it was now 14:20) and I still had to make a 20 minute walk AND purchase my ticket. Looking up at the balcony, they wanted to make sure it was their apartment unit where my drone had landed. There unit comprises three huge balcony doors and my drone was on the far left (far right facing the exterior) balcony. As we proceeded to the front door of the building I did not expect to hear the news that was about to be revealed to me. She began telling me that the reason they had been unresponsive was due to the fact that her father (Reyes’ husband) had passed away 10 days ago. Making our way up the stairs to the unit she also disclosed that neither her nor her mother had visited the apartment since his passing. I was so shaken by this sad news that any frustration I had felt, from having to return to Sevilla or to their unresponsiveness to my texts and calls, melted away at that very moment inside the stairway corridor. For these two sweet women to even correspond with me during such a difficult time was extremely gracious of them.

Adding a bit of humor to the otherwise melancholy situation, the daughter asked with a smile, “I hope you are not afraid of animals.” My initial thought was, “Please don’t tell me that her father had a dog, cat or some other pet inside that hadn’t been attended to in 10+ days.” I began thinking, “Should I hold my nose and pull an Elaine Benes (‘the fleas/fumigation Seinfeld episode – “The Doodle”) and have to run in, open the balcony door, gather my drone along with any broken pieces and exit before being hit with the stench of a dead animal?” But, my response to her was, “no, not at all.” Her beautiful smile gave way to her saying, “Good, because my father was an avid hunter and there are trophy animals all over the apartment.” That was an understatement. She wasn’t teasing. Good Lord! It was an impressive collection. For all the animal activists that might read this I will not offer insight into what animals there were that adorned the interior walls, but there were some I don’t think I had seen on anyone’s walls previously. With this information now hanging out there, she told me that the apartment wasn’t lived in but rather it was her father’s office. This was one incredibly nice apartment. To also serve as her father’s office overlooking the beautiful Metropol Parasol, had to make for a pleasurable working day.

As the balcony door opened, I felt a kind, gentle and loving spirit ride the waves of sunlight that beamed into the apartment for the first time over those 10 days that it sat undisturbed. In my opinion, the unit was wanting to relieve itself of the stale energy of the past that rested inside and needed to find its way to the heavens. These loving rays kissing her face, let her know that everything was as it should be in the spirit world with her father. I think it was good for her to enter the apartment that day and be the first one her father’s spirit met.

“Take your time,” she said. I responded, “I have burdened you enough so I will be quick.” I gathered the mostly still intact body, placed it into its carry case and thanked her for allowing me inside to retrieve it. We exited the apartment and out to the plaza where her mom was waiting for us. I thanked them in both English and Spanish. Thankful that even through the troubles of the world and the sadness in each of our lives that occurs, there are still amazingly great people who display a warm and gracious heart, willing to help others.

Now, what I haven’t yet told you is the good, no, best news of this entire story. There is a happy ending which its genesis lies in a new beginning for her family to share joy in together. Upon initially arriving to meet me, she was pushing a stroller and told me that the reason they had not called or texted me earlier in the day was because they had been at the hospital for her newborn baby daughter’s check up. As fate would have it, just days prior to her father’s passing away from cancer (of which she told me he met the illness bravely & courageously), he was granted a final gift. To witness his granddaughter enter the world in the same hospital where he happened to be spending his last days on earth. As her family was about to lose a life so valuable and precious to them, the circle of life would also grant them the greatest gift it provides. Life!

Her daughter, his granddaughter, was a beautiful little girl. Smiling at me as I peered at her resting softly in her stroller, I said to the new mother and to the widow who just lost her husband, “As sad and difficult as it must be to lose a father and a husband, as one life ends another beautiful life is born and it is embodied in your precious new daughter and lives on with your family!” They each smiled, which I know was very hard for them both, especially the widow. “Very true. Thank you so much. I hope you can retrieve the pictures from your drone and let me know if you are able to” she said with a smile. The widow simply smiled at me, her eyes filled with understood sadness.

We said goodbye and I hurried to the bus station. But I had forgotten something! I had to memorialize this moment. So I ran about 100 meters to catch them and I asked, “I forgot to get a selfie with you. Do you mind?” They had no problem posing for a picture.

Below is the correspondence that occurred over the next couple of days between us. As you can see, she thanks me for being considerate. But it is I, who am extremely grateful to her and her mother for their consideration to extend help to me. The world is still full of love and this is just one simple demonstration of that.

(March 8, 2017) Me: Hola! Muchas gracias for meeting me on Monday to get my drone. I’m so sorry for your loss but very happy for the beautiful baby girl you welcomed into the world.

I was able to salvage the video and pics from the drone! Thank God! I now am going to try to get it fixed in order to fly again. Again thank you so much! You were very gracious and considerate! God bless you!

(March 11, 2017) Reply to me: Hola! Thank you so so much for texting and being that considerate! It’s amazing (and weird these days) to find people such grateful. It’s a relief to hear that you got the videos and pics from the drone! Thank you for letting us know because we are very glad about that!!Again, we are sorry for not having made it easier to contact us and get your drone back sooner! My dad loss has been the worst experience in my life, but there is room in this world for beautiful things like saving the drone of somebody you don’t know and receiving a blessing back from his polite owner! So thank you for that and God bless you too!

(March 12, 2017) Me: De nada! Thank you for your kind words. You and your mom were the blessing for sure. I’m sorry you are grieving, I can only imagine how hard it must be to lose your father. Mine had a heart transplant 12 years ago and God afforded my family a new lease on his life. I’m eternally grateful for that blessing. We never know what each day holds so i cherish every moment that he is here.

Have a great Sunday and again Muchas gracias por ser tan amable y generoso! Dios te bendiga!

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The Sevilla drone pictures salvaged from the wreckage, thankfully. #gallery-0-10 { margin: auto; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-0-10 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-0-10 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; } /* see gallery_shortcode() in wp-includes/media.php */

Catedral de Sevilla

Catedral from Alcazar

Puente de Isabel

Plaza de Espana – aerial of me at fountain

Plaza de Espana – close up aerial of me @ fountain

DCIM100MEDIABreeze_17

My Drone, A Story of Life and Death March 6th - I sit now beneath the balcony where my Yuneec Breeze lies after an unfortunate crash that most likely ended it's all too brief life.

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