Science trivia

I study these objects in my research! :) They are thought to be young forming galaxies, which emit huge amounts of light of all wavelengths. Our best guess so far is that the radiation emitted by them is caused by matter "accreting" onto a supermassive black hole at the center, which is thought to power the galaxy formation process. As the matter accretes onto the black hole, through a (currently unknown) mechanism, huge jets are formed perpendicular to the plane of the accretion disk, which we can observe.

Q: if you wanted to see yourself upside down, would you use a convex or concave mirror?
 
Charn_Tim said:
I study these objects in my research! :) They are thought to be young forming galaxies, which emit huge amounts of light of all wavelengths. Our best guess so far is that the radiation emitted by them is caused by matter "accreting" onto a supermassive black hole at the center, which is thought to power the galaxy formation process. As the matter accretes onto the black hole, through a (currently unknown) mechanism, huge jets are formed perpendicular to the plane of the accretion disk, which we can observe.

Q: if you wanted to see yourself upside down, would you use a convex or concave mirror?
Click to expand...

I think I know this one. Concave? :eek:

Question: What bone is the fibula attached to?
 
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Olorin, regarding Lucy's question way back (and good job Lu, for braving the Science trivia thread :) ) you were really close. The bone's called the Tibia and it's your main shin bone. I don't like anatomy either but the only reason I know it is because I badly broke both of them in a high school football game when I was a senior.

Also, the closest galaxy similar in size to ours is Andromeda, but actually there are very small galaxies much closer to us than Andromeda, the closest being the Canis Major dwarf galaxy, only about 25,000 light years from our solar system (about a quarter of the diameter of our galaxy).

And since no one answered Olorin's intriguing question and Derny seems like she wants it answered ( ;) ) let's bring that one back. So...

Q: what is entropy?
 
Entropy has been referred to as "the eventual heat-death of the universe", meaning when all the stars have burned themselves out, and all the energy in space is distrubuted fairly evenly as heat - you can't make any stars out of that. But if you're like me, you think the end of time will probably come first, so you don't spend much time worrying about it. :D

What causes gravity and how does it work? (hard question... hehehe)
 
We don't know for certain; however, a standard explanation: the bending of Space-Time caused by mass makes the 'straight line' other masses travel along ...well, bent. :p Towards the object. (Einstien's Theory of General Relativity)

Time dilation – how does it work?
 
Well, supposedly the closer to light-speed you are, the slower time goes for you as compared to time for somebody who's not moving that fast. For instance, if I were to travel to Proxima Centauri at a speed of 99% that of light, and you were to stay on earth, it would feel to me like... well... I dunno the equations, but a lot less time than the 4 years it would be for you. I have no idea why this is, though. I hate relativity.

Q: What causes the earth's magnetic field?
 
good question! I believe it is due to currents flowing in the core of the earth.

And nice relativity discussion! :) I love that stuff. The most fundamental cause of time dilation that we know about is due to the fact that all observers must measure the speed of light to be a constant. (We physicists call it Lorentz symmetry and we think it is one of a handful of deeply fundamental properties of nature.) Thus, if you are moving with respect to someone else and you are both supposed to measure a light beam rushing by at the same speed, you must then disagree on what the lengths are or how fast each other's watches are ticking.

Here's a hard one: what is a wolf-rayet star? (there are only about a dozen of these guys that we know of yet.)
 
A star with a very strong solar wind, strong enough so that it loses its mass at the rate of about 1 X 10^-5 solar masses every year. Earth year, that is.

Q: What shape is an electron's D orbital?
 
D-orbitals are shaped rather like four leafed clovers. Except for the ones with doughnuts around their middles . . .

A question. How about, 'How do you make Dolphin the default browser in Ubuntu 8.4?'

No. I didn't think so. Let me try again.

What's 'Quark matter', assuming there is such a thing?
 
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