Airbrush

I wish you could explain this a little bit more, because I don't understand your point. A geostationary satellite is moving a little faster than 1,000 miles per hour, because it is covering a little more distance than the ground that it hovers over, and the ground is already moving 1,000 mph. "Ground speed" is never zero in my understanding. But I am not an expert.

Interesting question. The Earth rotates about 1,000 miles per hour at the equator. According to Wikipedia the Moon's average orbital speed is about 1 km/second, or 2237 miles per hour. So, the Moon's orbital speed is a over twice as fast as the Earth rotates. That is easy to understand and remember. Moon - Wikipedia

Yes, the simulation above shows the prevailing theory. Theia, a Mars-sized object, grazed the Earth and much of its' iron core joined the Earth's core. The Moon has a small iron core and is mostly mantle, made of crustal material very similar to Earth's crust.

1 It does not imply we live in a simulation. I never heard of any connection between 1/137 and living in a simulation. I am the only one making that connection. Because of the very exacting parameter required for life to exist, or even for the universe to exist, it looks like a "plan." Religious people will call it intelligent design. The other explanation I heard is eternal inflation explains that there could be an infinite number of universes, all with different parameters, and we happen to live in one that has 1/137 that enables life to exist. 2 "Turtles all the way down" is what I think Elon Musk is proposing when he states that he thinks it is a Billion times more likely we live in a simulation. There are a billion turtles, or simulations, and only one base reality. 3 If anyone could just listen to about the first 2 minutes of Matt O'Dowd, and tell me what he is missing? He said "The founders of quantum mechanics obsessed over it (1/137), calling it the most fundamental unsolved problem in physics." Is he lying, or mistaken, or what?

Then why would Neil deGrasse Tyson think we are just as likely in a simulation than in base reality? Is he an IT nerd? Is Musk delusional? Matt O'Dowd sounds like he knows what he is talking about. Did anyone listen to any of this Youtube? Where did Matt get it wrong? Is he an IT nerd? "Ever since the philosopher Nick Bostrom proposed in the Philosophical Quarterly that the universe and everything in it might be a simulation, there has been intense public speculation and debate about the nature of reality. Such public intellectuals as Tesla leader and prolific Twitter gadfly Elon Musk have opined about the statistical inevitability of our world being little more than cascading green code. Recent papers have built on the original hypothesis to further refine the statistical bounds of the hypothesis, arguing that the chance that we live in a simulation may be 50–50. Confirmed! We Live in a Simulation - Scientific American However, Wikipedia is a skeptic. "The hypothesis popularized by Bostrom is very disputed, with, for example, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder, who called it pseudoscience[6] and cosmologist George F. R. Ellis, who stated that "[the hypothesis] is totally impracticable from a technical viewpoint" and that "protagonists seem to have confused science fiction with science. Late-night pub discussion is not a viable theory." Simulation hypothesis - Wikipedia "The claims have been afforded some credence by repetition by luminaries no less esteemed than Neil deGrasse Tyson, the director of Hayden Planetarium and America’s favorite science popularizer. Yet there have been skeptics. Physicist Frank Wilczek has argued that there’s too much wasted complexity in our universe for it to be simulated. Building complexity requires energy and time. Why would a conscious, intelligent designer of realities waste so many resources into making our world more complex than it needs to be? It's a hypothetical question, but still may be needed.: Others, such as physicist and science communicator Sabine Hossenfelder, have argued that the question is not scientific anyway. Since the simulation hypothesis does not arrive at a falsifiable prediction, we can’t really test or disprove it, and hence it’s not worth seriously investigating."

Quantum physics is beyond me, so I figured the Science Lounge would be more appropriate than Physics. Is anyone familiar with the Fine Structure Constant? I saw a fascinating 15-minute Youtube with Matt O'Dowd explaining how the existence of life, and the universe itself, depends on very exact parameters. The founders of quantum mechanics obsessed over it, calling it "the most fundamental unsolved problem in physics." Elon Musk said he thought it is a Billion times more likely that we live in a Matrix-style simulation than in a base reality. Then Neil deGrasse Tyson said he thought it was about equal 50/50 probability we live in a simulation. Anyone familiar with that? So my question is, does this magical number 1/137 suggest we live in a simulation?

The universe as a mathematical construct? Recently I heard Elon Musk saying that it is a billion times more likely that we are living inside a "Matrix" type of simulation. "In 2003 Bostrom imagined a technologically adept civilization that possesses immense computing power and needs a fraction of that power to simulate new realities with conscious beings in them." "Elon Musk gave further fuel to the concept that our reality is a simulation: “The odds that we are in base reality is one in billions,” he said at a 2016 conference." Then I found that Neal deGrasse Tyson thinks it is about 50/50 probability we are living inside a simulation. Do We Live in a Simulation? Chances Are about 50–50 - Scientific American Does this suggest a "fine-tuned" universe?

Is it correct to say that any quasar that has a jet pointed at us is called a "blazar"? If so, then the vast majority of quasars that we see are not blazars. If 2 giant quasars were merging, they would whirl around each other faster and faster. If they were both distorting and tearing apart each other's accretion disks, won't that create more surface area infalling, where much more matter is being dumped onto the black hole? Would more matter falling in from many different directions from different accretion structures be like throwing more wood on the fire?

Quasars usually have a single accretion disk. When quasars merge, they must tear apart and scatter each other's accretion disks, resulting in many streams of matter entering each quasar from multiple directions, not just a single plane, but many contorted planes of accretion. Enough sparks to be noticed from across the universe. Just guessing.

Thanks for the info Mordred. That gets me thinking. As the 2 quasars approach each other, they would pull and contort each other's accretion disks long before they get too close. It might look as chaotic as a computer simulation of merging galaxies, how stars pass through each other, then fall back through each other. Maybe the merger would not be a mega-quasar, orders of magnitude brighter than the individual "average" quasars. Assuming billion solar mass quasars with average-sized accretion disks.

What is the average diameter of the accretion disk of a one billion solar mass SBH? It must be at least several light years across I guess. When merging SBH crash through each other's accretion disks, how energetic of a pulse is that? It must far outshine the merging quasars. Maybe they would be visible by the naked eye from billions of light years away. That should be the brightest light in the universe, a pulsing mega-quasar, just before they chirp up. Do they twist space or each other's event horizons as they rip around each other?

What would it be like for 2 SBHs that are whirling around each other, faster and faster, each is a quasar, both are crashing through the others accretion disks? It seems like that would be a pulsing mega-quasar, when 2 giant quasars merge, visible across the entire observable universe.

Can anyone make this estimation? If it takes days or weeks for the merger to occur, the 2 SBHs would just touch event horizons, while they are whirling around each other faster and faster. Gravity waves would be blasting out in every direction, like a balloon that is released to fly around in random directions. The final kick from the merger sent the new SBH flying away at 1300 miles per second. Right?

That is an interesting point. Since both SBHs are over a billion solar masses, their giant size would be out to the Oort cloud if overlaying our solar system. On that scale the speed of light seems slow, there is no instantaneous release of energy, or anything else. Does anyone have an idea to what speed the two SBHs could have spun around each other before merging?

Anyone familiar with the merging of 2 black holes? Remember when LIGO detected a "chirp" of when 2 black holes whirling around each other, speeding up until they merge in a crescendo chirp? The 2 combined mass equaled over 100 solar masses and 9 solar masses was converted totally into energy. What was it like when 2 supermassive black holes, one billion and another two billion solar masses, whirl around each other faster and faster until they chirp up as they merge? 3 MILLION solar masses was converted instantly into energy. Each SBH is dragging along a huge accretion disc, as they both crash thru each other's accretion discs, faster and faster. Imagine the sparks flying! What speed would they reach whirling around each other? Would it be 1300 miles per second, which is the speed the new SBH is flying out of its' galaxy? "When they translated the signal into sound, they heard something resembling a “chirp.” Scientists determined that the gravitational waves were set off by the rapid inspiraling of two massive black holes. The peak of the signal — the loudest part of the chirp — linked to the very moment when the black holes collided, merging into a single, new black hole." Scientists detect tones in the ringing of a newborn black hole for the first time | MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

When I Googled the op question, I found this article which says days are getting longer, and it is a mystery why. "Atomic clocks, combined with precise astronomical measurements, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer, and scientists don't know why. "Over the past few decades, Earth's rotation around its axis – which determines how long a day is – has been speeding up. This trend has been making our days shorter; in fact, in June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so. But despite this record, since 2020 that steady speedup has curiously switched to a slowdown – days are getting longer again, and the reason is so far a mystery." Earth's Days Are Mysteriously Getting Longer, Scientists Say : ScienceAlert

I just finished watching the OP Youtube. Michio said that Web could see giant galaxies, as big or bigger than the Milky Way, far on the edge of our visual horizon, over 30 Billion LY away now. We had expected to see only small galaxies. We thought they would merge over time to produce the largest galaxies, taking billions of years. But they were already giant near the beginning. This suggests maybe the direct collapse model of formation of supermassive black holes. They were supermassive near the beginning, suggesting they formed in a different way. Shortly after the big bang some giant clouds of gas were so spherical in shape that when they collapsed, they skipped star formation, and were born supermassive. "Distant and early supermassive black holes, such as J0313–1806,[40] and ULAS J1342+0928,[41] are hard to explain so soon after the Big Bang. Some postulate they might come from direct collapse of dark matter with self-interaction." Supermassive black hole - Wikipedia

This is also a trial balloon to see how his cult will react. The other cases seem more serious but that is exactly why Trump will not face punishment for the serious charges. A Trumper will find their way onto every jury to save their leader. Possibly he could be convicted only for this hush-money case because not very serious sentence. All they had on Al Capone was income tax evasion.

There was a recent episode of "How the Universe Works" about this giant merger. Did anyone see that? In the episode they only dance around the incredible amount of energy that is required to accelerate a mass of 3 billion solar to a speed of 1300 miles per second. "The two galaxies' central black holes circled closer and closer to each other during the collision. As this happened, the black holes emitted gravitational waves. This gravitational-wave emission occurred preferentially in one direction. When the two central black holes finally merged, this emission stopped, and the newly created leviathan rocketed off in the opposite direction." Gravitational Waves Send Supermassive Black Hole Flying - Scientific American Here are some facts and questions that I compiled about this merger in case anyone can answer these questions: 3c186 is about 3 BILLION solar masses. It resulted from the merger of 2 supermassive black holes, one more massive than the other, thus the asymmetry causing 3c186 to be traveling 4.7 million miles per hour (1300 miles per second). It is about 8 billion LY away and the merger took place about 2 billion years ago. The merger generated the energy of 100 million supernovae. How big a bang is that? It converted 0.1% of its' mass into energy, or (0.1% x 3 BILLION solar = 3 MILLION solar masses converted into pure energy, all at one. How long would that energy release take? Both SBHs have giant event horizons, billions of miles in radius. Would the energy released from the merger take minutes, hours, days, weeks? Would there be a fireball? Maybe not, because when they merged, GIANT gravity waves would have carried most of the energy away and any fireball would have been sucked up by 3c186. Anyone want to try to explain how they merged? How many megatons of TNT would the merger generate? My feeble calculations produced the number "undecillion" or about 10^36 megatons, what it takes to accelerate 3 Billion solar masses to 1300 miles per second. Correct me if I am wrong, but I recall an episode about a merger of 2 stellar mass black holes, each was less than 100 solar masses. The result was 9 solar masses converted into energy. Compare that to 3 million solar masses converted into energy!! Hubble detects supermassive black hole kicked out of galactic core | ESA/Hubble (esahubble.org) Can anyone translate the following article into English? Gravitational Waves in 3C186 – Supermassive Black Hole Ejection « General Relativity (gravityphysics.com) Can anyone explain this in English? "There is a black hole formed of total mass 3 billion solar masses (using the arXiv paper as a source for all calculations). Since a solar mass black hole has a Schwarzschild radius of 3 km, that makes for an object diameter of about 18 billion km, which is also of order of the wavelength of the waves involved in a gravitational merger. "The merger time when 80% of the energy is released is roughly 100 M for two holes of mass M merging, we have M = 1.5e9 solar masses, so the light travel time is about 1.5e9*3km/3e8meters/sec or 16,000 seconds is M in this case. 100 M is the time where all the energy comes out – AKA the chirp. "So about 1,600,000 seconds is the relevant time. (For GW150914 that LIGO saw the same time would be 0.03 seconds – the holes were only 30 solar masses)." Gravitational Waves in 3C186 – Supermassive Black Hole Ejection « General Relativity (gravityphysics.com)

Skip foward to 6:10 to where a unique version of "Dry & Heavy" begins. Rocking Time is ok but not Burning Spear at his best. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=burning+spear+dry+and+heavy+live

CO2 Direct Air Capture (DAC) "Plans for a total of eleven DAC facilities are now in advanced development. If all of these planned projects were to go ahead, DAC deployment would reach around 5.5 Mt CO2 by 2030; this is more than 700 times today’s capture rate, but less than 10% of the level of deployment needed to get on track with the Net Zero Scenario." Direct Air Capture – Analysis - IEA That means that after humans switch over to totally carbon-free energy, in about 50 years, by using Direct Air Capture, which requires lots of energy, but it can be increased in scale over time, we can restore a healthy atmosphere. We could return CO2 in the atmosphere to low, pre-industrial levels. This would cool the oceans, restore glaciers, moderate weather, re-freeze melting permafrost, and freeze over more of the Arctic Ocean. It won't hurt to also plant groves of trees and dedicate a dependable water supply to each tree, so that no tree's water supply gets interrupted.