cosecantphi

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be a dog or really any other non-human animal, and I think about how simple their understanding of the world around them must be given their lack of ability for much abstract thought. We take for granted all the ideas that are extremely obvious to us that other animals will absolutely never come close to understanding.

There are no creatures on Earth smarter than humans. Elephants, cetaceans, and non-human apes may come closer than we perhaps realize, but there are no creatures that absolutely crush us on this front, we have yet to be humbled. I feel like this gives rise to the common perception that human intelligence is infinite, that we are destined to understand every truth about the universe given a long enough timeline and enough effort.

That's a comforting thing to believe, but I don't think it makes sense when there's no reason at all to think we're the apex of intelligent lifeforms in this universe. It not impossible that there are alien species out there that would view our understanding of the world in much the same way we view that of other animals.

In that case, the implication is that there are any number of shockingly huge and fundamental revelations about the universe sitting right under our noses that we simply lack the ability to even perceive much less understand. This to me can be a bit of an unsettling line of thought to explore. It's the fear of the unknown with heavy reinforcement from the likely possibility that the unknown will always exist, often just beyond our reach.

66 million years ago, a massive 17km wide asteroid impacted what is now the modern day Yucatan peninsula at 25km/s. The immediate collision was so violent that the resulting crater floor was briefly deeper than the Mariana Trench while the crater rim was briefly taller than Mt. Everest. In total, it killed off 75% of all animal and plant species on this planet, including the dinosaurs.

The linked video is a real time demonstration of the catastrophic events that would occur within the first hour after impact if a similar asteroid were to hit Earth today.

The images we have nowadays are of course significantly clearer, but there's something about this low quality photo that is far more awe inspiring given the context.

It's a brief impression of something that no creature on Earth was ever meant to see. Nearly every Earthling has seen the near side of the moon, but the far side was supposed to be forever just out of reach. A sort of forbidden knowledge that we nevertheless barely obtained by the skin of our teeth through monumental scientific and engineering progress that would have been unthinkable for the vast majority of human history.

I can't imagine what went through the minds of the very first people to view this image after compiling the raw data from Luna 3's instruments.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3

Someone get the attention of the pope, this is very important information

Rewatching Code Geass and wow Suzaku is more insufferable than I remembered for the first three quarters of the show

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is about 724 lightyears away from Earth, and it has a mass of about 11 times that of the Sun. Despite that, it is about 700 times larger. If it were at the center of our solar system, it would engulf the four inner planets and Jupiter.

It's so big because it is currently reaching the end of its life. Massive stars have dramatically shorter lifespans than stars like the Sun because the rate of nuclear fusion in their cores is accelerated due to the massive gravitational pressures. This accelerated rate of fusion is producing huge outward pressures, puffing the star up to many, many times its original size. Once Betelgeuse runs out of fusible elements, that pressure will suddenly disappear and gravity will cause the star to implode, releasing ridiculous amounts of energy in a supernova.

Betelgeuse only formed about ten million years ago and is already on death's door. Astronomers don't know enough about stellar evolution to predict exactly when Betelgeuse will go supernova. But from what they do know, they're saying it could go off anytime between right now and the next 100,000 years. Since it is 724 lightyears away, we won't know until 724 years after the fact. So if we're lucky, we'll get to see the supernova if it already exploded about that long ago!

The last time a supernova was visible to the naked eye was in 1604. Today it's called Kepler's Supernova, named for Johannes Kepler, one of the astronomers who observed it at the time. The supernova was about 20,000 lightyears away and was bright enough to be visible during the day for three weeks.

Recently, astrophysicists have determined that saying the word Betelgeuse three times may cause it to explode sooner than it would have otherwise.

https://astronomy.com/news/2020/02/when-betelgeuse-goes-supernova-what-will-it-look-like-from-earth

I made a post a week ago thinking they weren't gonna send it, but it turns out it just took them a while! Thanks Hexbear for letting me know about this! I'll never doubt you again.

The first few seasons sorta did this in some capacity. I remember the intensely British early episodes mostly all included a social critique of some kind. A lot of the times that critique was sorta liberal in nature, but at least it was present. Early Black Mirror was almost like a Twilight Zone for gen z and millennials.

But wow did it have a sharp decline, especially after Netflix got it. Season five and Bandersnatch were especially terrible. I'm not even sure if the show has been renewed. If it ends up getting cancelled, I would hazard a guess that maybe it wasn't covid but those last two releases that did it in.

Imagine if Black Mirror retained the quality of episodes like Fifteen Million Merits all the way through its run. In this thread let's come up with actually good Black Mirror episode concepts. I always get a kick out of people doing the whole "wot if ur mum ran on batteries" bit.

Is this a thing circulating on facebook or something? Or has my dad's lead poisoned brain dreamt this up on its own