Archimedes

Mostly schooling. I'm working on my physics degree now, with a minor in astronomy. I plan on going to grad school for astrophysics, or something in the area of physics. I have learned a lot of technical stuff by reading; books, articles on the internet, posts on these forums. I tend to think of myself as a sponge when it comes to absorbing information. I tend to take in a lot at once, and can generally hold on to almost all of it. What I lose can be made up again by re-reading. Youtube has many great sources. Khan Academy, taped lectures, etc. The average man can learn a lot in this day and age, if he puts in the effort and puts his mind into it. You have to want to learn, and I love learning. - Arch

My experience with high school lab work (physics): We'd do the lab and plot the data the same day using a program, (the name is escaping me... ugh), that we'd have running through our equipment. Very rarely would we use MS Excel to plot data, though we did several times, (more to estimate data before testing). However, I know that not all high schools are the same in the way they do things, especially science labs. I can see the benefits and drawbacks of the way you described in your first paragraphs, namely 1). You'd get more time for the lab, a whole class session, and 2). You'd get more time working with the raw data to produce plots. Now as an undergrad physics major, this is one thing I definitely could have asked for. Now, as for your product: It sounds similar to what we would use in our labs, (may have to contact my high school physics teacher to ask the name of it). It would definitely be useful for students to visualize data, especially if it were more intuitive and interactive than entering data and functions into an Excel spreadsheet, which can get tedious if you do something wrong and get back #VALUE... So, maybe it would be something to test out in a few classrooms. See how the teachers like it, and see if the general success of the students increases when that is used versus when that school or teacher's traditional lab method is used. I would think it should definitely be helpful, but that's just IMHO. - Arch

In space, your visibility should be about the same as it is on a very clear night on the ground, but the stars wouldn't twinkle, a phenomena caused by atmospheric distortion. As Enthalpy posted above, newer telescopes, such as the twin Kek telescopes and the future TMT (Thirty Meter Telescope, first light scheduled for some time in 2022), have adaptive optics capability, with the ability to compensate for atmospheric distortions by adjusting the mirror with small motors. - Arch

The beauty of science is that the questions will never stop coming. Something such as the multiverse definitely raises more questions than answers, but it is what seems to make sense in terms of String Theory. Maybe it's the wrong way of looking at things. We don't know, it's as simple as that. String Theory is still in its early stages, and there's plenty more research to be done before we start getting definitive answers on any aspect of it. The universe is expanding, yes. But is it infinite? We don't know. That just raises more questions. Why wouldn't your question stand if it was infinite? Why couldn't there be an infinite number of infinite universes? See, there's always more questions. That's the beauty of science. - Arch

As far as I know, the speed of a photon will always be c. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/58321-photons-cant-accelerate-can-they/ http://van.physics.illinois.edu/qa/listing.php?id=1383 -Arch

The answer to this would be: science doesn't know. The only way we got the idea of the universe before the big bang being a singularity that was infinitesimally small, yet infinitesimally dense was by "rewinding," so to speak, the expansion of the universe from now to 14 billion years ago. The outcome? A singularity. In a singularity, physics seem to just... Break down. Our equations have never worked to understand a singularity. So that's just it, we don't know. -Arch

The Alcunierre Drive, which has been discussed many times on the forums, is a speculative idea that uses exotic matter to form a sort of bubble around the ship, which warps space-time around the ship. The ship is not moving faster than light; it is space which is "moving," due to the contraction of space in front of you and the expansion of space behind you. Now, to put this thread back on topic... if it could be use to move a celestial body? Well, you need to consider the massive quantities of energy it would take to move a small ship, say the size of a football stadium. In order to move a celestial body with it... It seems like it would be nearly, of not, impossible. Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive -Arch

Which would make sense in terms that there is only about 5% estimated total matter in the universe, the rest being made up of dark matter and energy. -Arch

Okay, now I remember reading about that. The more planets you have in a system, the higher the potential for collisions and chaos. For a sun like star, I would say we are probably close to a more chaotic number of planets. Now, if you had a larger star, and had more space in between the planets, then it is definitely feasible to have more planets. -Arch

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't our solar system, in it's younger days, have many more planets and planetoids that were subject to collisions? I would think that for a star such as our sun, the limit would be close to what we have now, because to get to the stable system we have now, many bodies collided and joined to form larger bodies, which then stabilized? Just a thought, I could be wrong. -Arch

Airbrush Said it all. Quasars are not dark matter, and have nothing to do with it. Quasars are super massive black holes. When a black hole feeds, they sometimes eject excess material when too much is entering at one time.

Dark matter is different from antimatter. -Arch

The universe is definitely expanding at an increasing rate. If you want mathematical terms, the cosmic scale factor has a positive second derivative. The velocity that we see a galaxy moving away from us is continuously increasing as time goes on. Are you asking about our accuracy to measure the speed? (EDIT - I see EdEarl already asked this). -Arch

Alright, thank you Krash, that helps. -Arch

It is to my understanding that in the center of a black hole, the laws of physics sort of... break down? So who's to say what's on the other side of a black hole - if there's anything at all - because we have not been there to observe what happens or where it goes. It is a strange thing to think about, that's for sure. Maybe a universe? Nobody really knows. -Arch