Weird theoretical physics questions thread

[Elvis 3369]

I spend a lot of time imagining crazy astrophysics scenarios.  I use it as a kind of meditation at night time.  When I am imagining multidemensional space, time dialation, and travelling a billion times the speed of light, I find that my mind can't also worry about emails or budgets and stuff.

 

I have a few crazy ideas.  I'll start with one close to home.

 

I don't know what the theoretical limit of the diameter of a solid planet is.  But imagine a world like Earth, but much bigger....like Saturn or Jupiter big.  It still has land and water and humans and everything else we had prior to discovering the world is round through simple observation.

 

Would that enormous surface appear so flat and unending that we would never discover the nature of the Universe?  If we were stuck in a flat plane that could not be observed to be round, how crippled would physics and calculus be?  How else could the geniuses figure it out through observation?

 

*this is not a flat Earth topic

[UT_OB1 2213]

3 hours ago, Elvis said:

I spend a lot of time imagining crazy astrophysics scenarios.  I use it as a kind of meditation at night time.  When I am imagining multidemensional space, time dialation, and travelling a billion times the speed of light, I find that my mind can't also worry about emails or budgets and stuff.

 

I have a few crazy ideas.  I'll start with one close to home.

 

I don't know what the theoretical limit of the diameter of a solid planet is.  But imagine a world like Earth, but much bigger....like Saturn or Jupiter big.  It still has land and water and humans and everything else we had prior to discovering the world is round through simple observation.

 

Would that enormous surface appear so flat and unending that we would never discover the nature of the Universe?  If we were stuck in a flat plane that could not be observed to be round, how crippled would physics and calculus be?  How else could the geniuses figure it out through observation?

 

*this is not a flat Earth topic

Is there a moon on this hypothetical planet?  If so, observe the shape of shadow during an eclipse.  Constellations visible will change as you move north and south. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21864]

I believe the theoretical size limit for a rocky planet is about 3 times the Earth’s radius.  So significantly smaller than Jupiter.

[Elvis 3369]

Here's another one.

A lot of times I use this as a meditation technique.  I had never told it to anyone, and then I decided to tell it to my wife.  She said it was good and I should audio record it as guided meditation or hypnosis.  I may get to that one day, because there are a lot of details that I imagine.  But here's the gist...

Imagine yourself without a body so that you could travel in space without the limitation of mass.  Don't worry about propulsion.  It's more like your a ghost, a raith, or a god, but not entirely omnipotent. 

So you are anywhere you want to be to start.  Earth sounds good.  So you can travel effortlessly into orbit.  Then you decide to travel faster than light to check out Saturn.  You get there FAST.  Ok, let's look at the solar system from way above the elliptical plane.  Kind of hard to see anything.  How big is the galaxy?...about a hundred thousand light years I think.  So I will travel 36,500,000 times the speed of light to get above the galactic elliptical plane.  This looks cool.  How far is the next galaxy and which way is it.  There it is, you get there fast.  Wait, where was the Milky Way?  Shit, I'm lost.  I don't have a map or universal positioning system.  Fuck it, lets see how big the Universe realy is.  I think it's about 14.8 billion years wide, but not sure.  Ok, I'll go 14.8X10^9*365 the speed of light to see the edge of the Universe.

 

Now here's the thought.  How could you travel so far away from that there is absolutely no light? This would assume a finite Universe, which it may not be.  As soon as you got away from all light and energy, what would it look like as it came into view.  Also, you wouldn't know which way to look.  You are in absolute darkness of all energy.  It's quiet.  No emails.  No text.  No Surly.  Alone.  You can rest.  Good night.

[Fudge Nuggets 19184]

4 hours ago, Elvis said:

As soon as you got away from all light and energy, what would it look like as it came into view. 

Solid black. 
 

That was easy. 

[thunderlounge 7812]

None more black. 

[miguelito 11250]

Einstein predicted that once you get to the point of blackness, there's no going back.

[Elvis 3369]

Once you go black, you never go back?

 

I looked and I can't find where Einstein predicted that.  Seriously.

[Bookman 4638]

So I've been trying to get an actual understanding of the Higgs Boson, symmetry breaking, and all that. This shit is hard. I think I need to take some math classes.

[Homercles 10205]

Could God microwave a burrito so hot that even he couldn’t eat it?