Airbrush

If the center of OUR galaxy had an active quasar, that would make it even worse for life in the central region. But you don't need an active galactic nucleus to suppress life. All you need are plenty of supernovae going off, and that is what happens in the dense regions of any galaxy.

The info is already out there, but AI makes it easier for ANY evil person to succeed. It takes an evil GENIUS to figure it out without AI. Evil and genius are not common qualities in a single person.

Evil people can ask AI how to assassinate someone, make a dirty bomb, or commit the most heinous crimes. Maybe that is where controls kick in restrict freedom to do evil.

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

"Trump wanted the department to act because it would give legitimacy to his claims that the election was stolen from him, the panel said. In a Dec. 27 call with acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and Donoghue, Trump was not interested in the actual results of a DOJ investigation, Donoghue said. Rosen told Trump the department could not change the outcome of an election. “He responded very quickly,” Donoghue said. “And he said, essentially, ‘That’s not what I’m asking you to do. What I’m asking you to do is to say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.’” "These handwritten notes show that President Trump directly instructed our nation's top law enforcement agency to take steps to overturn a free and fair election in the final days of his presidency," Maloney said in a statement. READ: Notes from December 2020 phone call between Trump and Justice Department officials | CNN Politics

Wow! I never realized that a geostationary orbit was so high an altitude. 35,800 km means over 22,000 miles high, which is almost one tenth the distance to the moon. Anyone have an idea of how many geostationary satellites the US has hovering over North Korea?

It seems like a fool's errand to try to prove that Trump knew he really lost the election. He will NEVER break character about the 2020 election. He is someone who "does everything right" and never "did anything wrong."

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