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Joined 8 days ago
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Cake day: December 14th, 2024

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  • That’s a whole different discussion, which is why I left the question there.

    The answer is likely no. Galaxies, unlike a good chunk of stars, are almost as old as the universe itself. The youngest observed galaxy has actually been found to have stellar signatures that give it an age of 1 billion to 10 billion years, and I suspect James Web will find more, inevitably confirming it too formed at the same time as more other galaxies.

    The supermassive black holes are quite likely primordial black holes - they came into existence shortly after the big bang (and there is debate on which big bang they formed with - yes, there is a working theory that there were two the conventional big bang, and a dark matter big bang).

    The problem with black hole mergers being the source of them is that space is huge. When the Milky Way Collides with Andromeda, it’s very possible that no stars, let alone the supermassive black holes, interact between galaxies. They will possibly change shape but due to the gravitational interaction of the two galaxies dark matter.

    A lot of theories are waiting on data from James Web. The really interesting part, is that the further back in time we look - we still see galaxies that have formed. As I mentioned earlier with the two big bang theories is that there is now some thought that the universe isn’t as finite as well believe, but it is cyclical. We are aware of the heat death of the universe, where the space between individual particles is too great to sustain an interaction. We have two possible ages of the universe, shortly apart from eachother.

    Current research is looking at the relationship between particle chirality, the mystery between matter and anti-matter imbalance, the distribution of dark matter, and primordial black holes to see if it can be linked together. One of the more popular theories right now is that dark matter is likely a class of weakly interacting massive particles that we know a lot of characteristics of, but need something orders of magnitude stronger than the LHC to produce it.



  • The other two have corrected you on the lifespan of red dwars.

    However, it’s actually pretty neat to understand why small stars have exceptionally long lifespans, and big ones are very short: it’s because of the limitations of quantum tunneling and nuclear fusion, vs mass.

    In order for a star to generate any light, it needs a shit ton of energy. The only way to get this epic shit ton of energy is nuclear fusion. Because of physics, massive particles are attracted to eachother because of gravity. Heavier masses attract more particles. As the particles start piling up on top of eachother, they generate heat because they are also being repelled by other forces (namely electromagnetism). Heat is really a particles kinetic energy - the amount of energy of its movement.

    At a certain point, hydrogen fuses to Helium, helium fuses, then heavier elements like carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, all the way up to Iron.

    Each time a specific fuel runs out, there is a small to large explosion as the force compressing the particles is less than the force repelling the particles. Depending on how massive the star is, this could happen very quickly, or not at all. Red dwarfs don’t usually have the mass required to fuse more helium, so the fusion reaction continues forever until the gravitational forces are in equilibrium with the e&m forces. In bigger stars, the rate of fuel being consumed increases with mass, so you burn through each fuel quicker. In a star hypothetically large enough, it’s possible that the mass is enormous enough for it to consume all of its fuel in short succession, and instead of even getting a black hole, the star completely blows itself apart.

    Which leads to other really crazy things - like the question on supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies. How did they form if stars of a certain size would blow themselves to smitherings?


  • That’s the weird part - they have some stuff based on experiences, like dropping my kid off at school, and being in a baseball stadium. The missile landing looked similar to an artillery napalm round in Helldivers, but the wedding, the glitter bomb, the baseball stadium my parents in NYC, in a bunker? Yeah not exactly stuff I’m familiar with.

    I remember another dream where I was being driven to school as a kid, and giant flying saucers descend from the sky and start firing green lasers into the ground. Or a time in hypnosis where I talked to an Eldritch entity consisting of an eyeball and tentacles that’s connected to all of us that is the reason we get stress headaches because we try to pull them off (yeah).

    My mind is weird