blown away by scale

i am currently located in bellaire, ohio, TheUnitedStates, earth, TheSol system, TheOrionArm, TheMilkyWay, TheLocalGroup, TheVirgoSupercluster, TheKnownUniverse. each of these descriptions is EASILY several orders of magnitude larger than the previous one in the list. that is, ohio is at least 10 times larger than bellaire; TheUnitedStates is at least 10 times larger than ohio; etc. that is just mind-boggling considering as things get bigger, 10x bigger than that is just so insanely bigger that thinking of the next step makes brains cell runs for cover.

say, for example, you place a grain of sand on the very center of the 50-yard line on a football field. this grain of sand represents earth. a scaled sun would be a bit larger than a softball, just about the size of the 50-yard line stripe itself. that may not seem like a huge difference, but in actuality, you can fit about ONE MILLION earths in the sun (and thus approximately 1,000,000 grains of sand in this softball). now here's the insanity of scale... the largest known star in the universe is YZ Canis Majoris. can you take a guess how big it would be? just take a guess, would it fit between the 40-yard lines? maybe, the 20-yard lines? would it be goal line to goal line? think about it and take a guess...









well, if you gave up on guessing, i'll tell ya. granted these are rough calculations, but you'd have to add a football field to both sides of the one we are standing on and (neglecting endzones) YZ Canis Majoris would reach to the FAR 5 yard line on these extra fields. we think of our earth as big. we think of our sun as big. while it takes 8 minutes for our suns light to travel to use from the earth (just to reiterate, going the speed of light), it takes about 8 HOURS for light to cross from one side of YZ Canis Majoris to the other. just for shits and giggles and maybe strokes for people who have a hard time with big numbers. the number of earths that would fit in this big guy... almost 10,000,000,000,000,000. that's ten quadrillion earths in just one star.

that's about as far as i'm going to take the numbers for now, but think briefly... there are BILLIONS of stars each found in BILLIONS of galaxies each found in what might be millions of super-clusters. the scale is just awe striking and humbling. and with that, i need a break or a beer... or both.

erase wisely

this is from a webcomic called "brown sharpie". it's full of crazy math comics that i rarely understand, but occasionally there is one simple enough for me to laugh at. this is one of them. if you don't get it, act like you are erasing a chalkboard side-to-side, and think about what your butt is doing. i had a very few cute female teacher's aides in college, and this was the highlight of my recitations with them.

me last night

click on the pic to see more new math pix.

today was a good day

i mentioned in a post in december that i play a quick online game every morning gauging my "on"-ness. yesterday and today, i was BANG ON! i've been pretty nerdy lately, but i was, to steal from the cool snow-boarder guys, STOKED! i made it into the top 10, that is tough, and if it weren't for a few hasty decisions, i might've made the top 5. i had some good runs, starting both with 0.0 (perfect), a few 1.0s, it was good. i have a hard time with the circle in a triangle. so, that's my excitement for the day (and it's raining, so SWEET!). today (and yesterday) was a good day according to my gauge game. and, again, if you're interested, you can play the game here.

yesterday's score (click for full size)

today's score (click for full size)

this is me... in data

i was kinda hoping i'd be a little more exciting. guess i'll have to spruce things up. check it out here and, let me know if you are more exciting looking than i. you can reach me at: slyght69 {at} yahoo {dot} com.

yup, i'm still a nerd

i really thought this link was funny. well, maybe not funny, but it certainly took a creative/nerdy person to come up with both the equation AND the limerick. nice.

we are all bugs (part 1)

ok, i'm going to let you follow me through this. this is my stream of consciousness, and it is turbulent. just in case it doesn't work, you'll see the work i went through...

1. i look up the circumference of the earth at it's largest (it spins, so there is centripetal force; therefore, at the equator):
   
   24,901.55 miles



2. i divide this by 2 (since the furthest you can SEE is halfway round the world, and i convert this into millimeters for ease of use (i hate metric but (1) i don't know if americans can REALLY fathom anything smaller than an inch and (2) metric makes so much more sense... it's decimals kids!!!


20,037,580,000 millimeters (that's 20 BILLION, 37 MILLION, 580 THOUSAND, 000 millimeters

or 210,367,873.2267 flaccid penises for you curious folk out there (courtesy of weirdconverter.com


3. i look up the average size of a virus [rhinovirus in this case (the common cold)]:
   
   from the best i can tell it is 20 nanometers, so we'll go with .00002mm for arguments' sake.



4. then i search for the distance to the nearest star:
   
   4.37 light years (converted that is 4.134251x10^19mm or 9,804,959,294,158 marathons...that's for my web-buddy, Rich|Championable (though he may not want to be associated with me anymore)



5. now i find the average height of a human being:
   
   1650mm seems to be the average for humans, globally, both male and female, from the 5 seconds of google.com data i scoured through.

so, from that exercise, we've determined that:

1. dividing 2 by 3, we get that the farthest away one cold virus can be from another is 1,001,879,000,000,000 units



2. dividing 4 by 5, we see that the we are in proximity to the nearest STAR by
   
   25,056,066,666,666,666 units

that's only 25 to 1.

AND that is slightly intoxicated math. could be worse or better. what i'm saying is, is that we're not so far away from the stars as we think. if i went into how far away the nucleus (neutrons/electrons) is from the electrons, my numbers would blow your mind. we are a big world, and a monstrously huge universe... but it's all scale, and scale can be reduced to relativity. we aren't so far away from anything we might strive for. don't let anything convince you otherwise...

and TOMORROW, i'll tell you why we are bugs. you might think it is depressing... but really, if you THINK about it, it's so amazingly hopeful. i can't wait but since i got distracted by math (i'm not a normal man, they go home, sleep, drink, take a lady back and make love, watch SportsCenter), i'll have to do it later. maybe i'll do atomic relations tomorrow. thinking of that... i'll probably be single forever. now THAT is an awful thought, though rigorously proven.

thanks for tuning in.

hangman

1 TALL G--------
+
7 K------ B----
+
2 Hours
__________________

1 big headache


you fill in the blanks!

EVERYTHING is poignant

i've realized lately, i'm just as confused...

and just as determined!

thanks XKCD.com

0.999 = 1

don't believe me? check out this proof:

let x = 0.999

10x = 9.999

10x-x = 9.999 - 0.999

9x = 9

x=1

therefore, 0.999 = 1.

fancy!

i'm such a nerd...

...because i saw this and laughed. there's more here.

this is awesome

who knew shampoo could be so fun? check out this video of the kaye effect. strangely enough it was named after a man who observed it but had no clue how to quantitatively describe WHY it worked. nifty. i wanna try this.

MTV...blah

new poll over to the left. please check it out. without peeking at the site, take a guess how much music MTV plays in a week (168 hours). i wanna see how close you can get. i'll post the correct answer in a week or so. later.

IQ vs. religiosity

i didn't look deeper into the research, but it kinda makes sense to me. what do you think the correlation would be? and keep in mind, this is on the AVERAGE. there are, of course, exceptions, i'm sure. check out the graph/data.

happy pi (π) day!!!

today is 3/14, the short approximation of π. so go out and have a pie (pizza or fruit) to commemorate the day, to think about the joys π has brought you in the past (sure has kept me warm a few nights... i'm not telling if that's really true or not), and for you avogadro groupies/chem nerds, don't forget... mole days is coming up on 6/22 (1 mole = 6.022x10^23 particles).

jules just called me from ireland (around 2am). she woke up and remembered she forgot to call me last night. how sweet, i know. as much as i hated india, we were talking about how we miss getting ready for work together, getting to see each other every day. she was supposed to come visit me tomorrow through st. patty's day weekend, but as is typical in our job, her assignment was extended through the end of the month. that goes back to being jacked because i was supposed to visit her IN ireland for about a week but the job changed to be shorter so i didn't go. now it seems i could've. now, i'm jealous she gets st. patty's day IN ireland. i'm telling ya, that girl get EVERYTHING nice. ok, going back to bed for a bit. happy pi (π) day!!!