What is Digg?99 Comments
- theGoodness, on 12/04/2008, -2/+55After all that humans still scare me more.
- CCunitz, on 12/04/2008, -0/+52I hope one of these occurs before lunch, I've got an exam that is going to rape me at 2pm.
I'd rather the cosmos smite me than have my anal dignity stolen by a marauding examination. - Sublex, on 12/04/2008, -3/+45Bring it, universe.
- OMGNinjas, on 12/04/2008, -0/+34God damn space is an *****
- DavidChouinard, on 12/04/2008, -0/+30Love it that you're commenting on digg instead of actually studing for that ass-raping exam of yours
- mlynn5, on 12/04/2008, -3/+31"if an asteroid should come hurdling towards us"
It's hurtling, but the idea of an asteroid running across the universe jumping hurdles is pretty funny. - IWDA4, on 12/04/2008, -0/+231) We have witnessed galaxies colliding before. Not actually the moment in which the came together, but the hubble has captured photographs of galaxies that have cannibalized one another and have now combined into one.
2) The chances of us being affected by the collision are very slim. Stars are VERY spread apart. In fact, the closest star to us, Alpha Centauri, is 4.37 light years away. If each star, Alpha Centauri and our sun, was the size of a grain of sand, they would still be 2 miles away from each other. When the galaxies crash, solar systems will pass by each other, unharmed. It's possible that out of the billions of stars in both the Milky Way and Andromida, there will be quite a few solar systems that happen to collide, but I don't think we need to worry about ours being one of them. The only difference it will make to the lives of humans living on Earth, is the view in the night sky. Eventually Andromeda will become visible to naked eye, and throughout time it will seem to get bigger and brighter. Soon it will fill the night sky, and then eventually it will just look like a giant, colorful Aurora. During the millions of years in which the impact will take place, the Andromida galaxy will begin to fade away as it and our galaxy become one.
Now I know I seem ridiculous for stating something is false on a site like Cracked. It's obvious that each thing listed on every article (usually) has some fake facts and it's all about the fun, but the reason I just brought this up is because I found the whole #2 to be false. I also hope to never write a comment this long again. - bowlagoat, on 12/04/2008, -0/+22dugg for exceptional use of the word marauding.
- dha07030, on 12/04/2008, -0/+20Hah! I already ate lunch.
- KibblesnBitts, on 12/04/2008, -0/+20I'm spending my potential last day of existence on cracked then commenting on its article on Digg....*****
- creamy, on 12/04/2008, -0/+19I'd say they forgot "False Vacuum" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_vacuum & http://theuniverseexistsformyamusement.wordpress.c ...
Scares the hell out of me. - BadAstronomer, on 12/04/2008, -2/+16Looks like someone has been reading my book Death from the Skies! http://www.amazon.com/Death-Skies-These-Ways-World ...
- Hinducow28, on 12/04/2008, -0/+11If you will excuse me, I'm going to curl up in a fetal position beneath my desk with a paper bag over my head (and a towel just in case).
- specialK16, on 12/04/2008, -0/+10Don't be an ***** with your girlfriend, whom you live with.
See, you don't have to worry about that either.
Having said that,
I wish I had a girlfriend. - bluepill2, on 12/04/2008, -0/+10Cracked should do an article about all the 2012 crap out there. Debunking myths using sweet science and humor turns me on.
- dagnabbit, on 12/04/2008, -0/+8Kind of scary how it could all end without
- theGoodness, on 12/04/2008, -0/+8250 people died in mumbai last week
gamma rays were not involved in any of the deaths
humans were involved in 250
you do the math - Foxprowl, on 12/04/2008, -1/+8Dugg for the Sun to be henceforth called "Deathball"
- stuffradio, on 12/04/2008, -0/+7without... what!?!? The suspense is killing me. Are you still there? Did you get killed or something? Hello??
- strictnein, on 12/04/2008, -0/+6Dugg for "Why's mom all melty?"
- Truedirt, on 12/04/2008, -3/+9About this: You and your girlfriend work different shifts at the same company and today is her birthday. She left for work in the morning and you are supposed to have lunch together later. She happens to come back home mid morning to retrieve something she forgot to take with her earlier and walks on you making out with that one girl she always has issue with at work and always complains to you about.
Forget about a cosmic event. You betcha, you may be dead before lunch. - X9001, on 12/05/2008, -0/+5So thats what happened to you today?
- audiogeek5, on 12/04/2008, -0/+5They Forgot "Clearing of the way for a hyperspace bypass."
Don't Panic. - Vancent, on 12/04/2008, -0/+5Best Cracked list I've read in awhile, really interesting stuff.
Also, I just love reading "a billion Michael Bay movies going on at the same time". - SisyphusFragmnt, on 12/04/2008, -0/+5then you'd just turn into the Hulk.... right guys?
- prowlerjm, on 12/04/2008, -0/+4Going on Coast to Coast AM again any time soon? That was a great show.
- crapuccino, on 12/05/2008, -0/+4OK Phil, I bought it. Are you happy now? ;)
- UnFriendlyFire, on 12/04/2008, -0/+4As long as it's before lunch, because I'm going to be busy later in the day.
- stutimandal, on 12/04/2008, -0/+3The thumbnail should have been the one titled "Actual science picture."
- inactive, on 12/04/2008, -0/+3infinitely more horrifying, when it's personal and not based on scientific clockwork or natural order of things.
- a1cd, on 12/05/2008, -1/+4I have a friend who watched on of the 2012 documentaries on youtube and has now fallen into a depression where he doesnt care about anything because he thinks we are all gonna die in 2012.
Pretty sad, I know. - TSK05, on 12/05/2008, -0/+3Oh god. Is probably not real and won't help me debunk your crap. Oh well, so, to start:
"Dark matter was never proven, it was literally made up by scientists when the first Big Bang theory required matter that didn't exist in order to be plausible"
Dark matter is currently an extremely widely accepted theory. Dark matter includes things like neutrinos (proven to exist), white dwarfs (proven to exist), pulsars (widely accepted), planets (need I say anything here) and other non-luminous things (or faintly luminous). I assume you're referring to the portion of dark matter that we're still not sure about (because all the above combined don't make up nearly enough mass that we need to have in dark matter). Thing is - it WASN'T made up for the big bang theory (although is now necessary). The theory was created to explain galactic rotation curves - which would be vastly different without dark matter there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_rotation_probl ... There are essentially two possibilities: our models for gravity (the newest of which would be general relativity) are wrong or non-baryonic (invisible, ie dark) matter exists. The later is widely accepted but the former is being studied by some scientists as well.
"and then dark energy was thought up once dark matter was debunked."
So obviously you don't know what you're talking about since dark matter is widely accepted while you clearly think dark energy has replaced dark matter.
"Even black holes are still theoretical. They basically say "Stuff is happening at that point in space for some reason, we don't know why, let's chalk it up to black holes."""
No. We have models for blackholes, we're not saying "oh look, something strange, must be blackholes". We're seeing something that blackhole models would predict and then we say "oh, could be a blackhole." For stellar mass blackholes, we know that if they accrediting material, they will steadily emit x-ray radiation. We see this from certain objects and say "oh look, we have nothing else that we know of right now that is a steady continuous source of x-ray radiation, could be a blackhole." For systems in which we are quite sure a blackhole exists, like Cygnus X-1, we can see jets or the outcome of jets being there - also predicted by models and nothing else that we know of emits such jets either. Then we examine what it means for an object to be a blackhole, it means that it's escape velocity = sqrt(2GM/r) > c. So if we can determine that to be so, then we can safely say it's a blackhole. We attempt to measure radius and mass through various techniques. When we've seen a persistent source of x-rays with jets, they've always had an escape velocity > c - possibly. The mass and radius are not known with an extremely accurate certainty - so for Cygnus X-1 for instance, if things were JUST right then it is possible that it would have an escape velocity less than c. Which is why we don't say we've proven blackholes but we're quite certain they are there and there is very good evidence for them being there. I won't go into supermassive blackholes but there is even more evidence for those than stellar mass blackholes.
In short you clearly don't understand dark matter (you think it's a discredited theory when in fact it's widely accepted theory and is the current dominant theory, existing SIMULTANEOUSLY with dark energy - because they serve different functions, ie dark energy cannot explain galaxy rotation curves while dark matter cannot explain the acceleration of the expansion of the universe). Thus your opinion is baseless and irrelevant. Take an ASTR100 course if you're still in college, should make things clearer and then you can make an informed opinion. - crimsonkage, on 12/05/2008, -0/+3Did you remember to hide the body?
- jamdogg, on 12/04/2008, -0/+3Shotgun Mars for when the sun expands enough! There I shotgunned it.
- Kallahan, on 12/05/2008, -0/+2Umm, if our solar system gets launched into a large grouping of stars the light & heat from them can still fry us, if we were in our galaxies core there would be no chance of life due to amount of radiation and heat. It would be brighter than a sunny day 24/7. There are lots of ways a galaxy collision could kill us, while a direct solar system collision is very improbably, its not necessary. Not to mention a galaxy collision would probably turn the resultant galaxy core into an active galaxy nucleus.
- 8bitflu, on 12/04/2008, -1/+3Imagine a planet full of people who turn green and massive when mad. You think pissing off terrorists now is bad.
- danunderscore, on 12/05/2008, -0/+2Also the amount of ***** thrown around by the passing stars and solar system would be immense. Passing solar systems would screw up alot of the orbits of planets and asteroid belts, so there would most likely be alot more collisions
- cughin, on 12/05/2008, -1/+3ur a tool
- SisyphusFragmnt, on 12/04/2008, -0/+2With how much you promote that book I hope it sells well.
- TSK05, on 12/05/2008, -0/+2"If you disagree that's fine, but personal attacks are uncalled for."
If you're referring to "Thus your opinion is baseless and irrelevant" - my statement stands. You cannot form an intelligent opinion on something you don't understand, it's just impossible. Like if you asked me about some chemistry thing I didn't know about right now I wouldn't be able to say much and my opinion on the argument would also be baseless and irrelevant.
"And even if I did mean it the way you seem to think I meant it, what's worth getting worked up over anyway?"
I wasn't THAT worked up but I did want to correct your inaccuracy. A lot of work goes into studying astrophysics (which I am doing) so understandably I am little touchy when I see what appear to be "astrophysics is all crap" kind of posts.
"My point was, "dark matter," "dark energy" and "black holes" are placeholders, just general all-purpose catchphrases we've come up with to explain the characteristic phenomena, until we figure out what these things really are."
Yes for dark energy, partially for dark matter but no for blackholes. We know exactly what a blackhole is - it's an object with an escape velocity greater than the speed of light. That is mathematically possible and based on very sound evidence I can also say that it is quite probable. The escape velocity for any object (including Earth) is v = sqrt(2GM/r), you can get that by equating gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy. We know that formula is true, we use it for rockets. So what happens when that formula yields a speed (meaning that M/r are very big, as in a very massive object with a fairly small radius) > c? That means even light can't escape from the object...ie, you get a blackhole. What is so strange about this?
All of dark matter is not a placeholder but a part of it is. The original (and one of the main reasons still) dark matter is necessary is to explain the high velocity of stars in the galaxy that are far beyond the disk and even the halo. Velocity should drop off as you get farther from the center of the galaxy. But it doesn't. This goes against laws of gravity (including general relativity). When we are calculating the velocity, it primarily depends on how far from the center the object is and the mass inside its orbit. Part of why our predictions are off is because we do not take into account some of the mass inside the orbit because we're not sure how much mass there should be. That is, we do not know how many planets, brown dwarfs, white dwarfs, pulsars and blackholes there should be. We can guesstimate but it varies from galaxy to galaxy. Part of that extra mass inside the orbit we need for predictions to match observation also comes from neutrinos (which have recently been discovered to have a mass). A good chunk of that extra mass necessary has an unknown origin. THAT [part of dark matter] is a placeholder. - LucifersDad, on 12/05/2008, -1/+3I get that when you watch politicians on TV.
- inactive, on 12/04/2008, -0/+2I came.
- strictnein, on 12/04/2008, -0/+2The real question is who has the better illustrations?
Can your book compete with this?
http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/cosmi ...
or this?
http://cdn-www.cracked.com/articleimages/dan/cosmi ...
Thanks for the reminder on the book. Need to add that to the old X-mas list. - harrisbradley, on 12/04/2008, -0/+2Whew, I scarfed my corn dog down as quickly as possible and chugged my Coke. I'm good for a day.
- stuffradio, on 12/04/2008, -0/+1Wait till tomorrow!
- TSK05, on 12/29/2008, -0/+1@ Disgod
Better late than never (my response). No, we can't look at the elemental composition to determine how high on hydrogen the sun is. We only see the composition of the top layers of the sun, we can't see down inside. The sun is convective on top but then there is a radiative zone so all that hydrogen we might see on top will never reach the bottom. And since we can't see the bottom (into the core), we don't know how much hydrogen that has left. - Disgod, on 12/06/2008, -0/+1Can't we also look at the elemental composition of the sun? We can accurately measure the relative amounts of hydrogen to helium, and other elements. It's mostly hydrogen right now, with some helium. So we know the sun isn't running low on hydrogen.
- Disgod, on 12/04/2008, -1/+2#5 is wrong. We'd probably see a black hole near us thanks to gravitational lensing.... I think. It should have plenty of gravity to cause the effect, we'd just have to look for it. The only problem I'd see is that the effect maybe too small for us to notice, but I doubt it.
- jamdogg, on 12/04/2008, -1/+2The puny humans are destroying themselves well enough. "Dark Energy" needn't trouble itself.
- inactive, on 12/04/2008, -0/+1this thread is starting to sound like It's Always Sunny.
And I'm sorry that your Ass-Ploughing professor is gonna plough you in the ass with that exam. -
Show 51 - 100 of 100 discussions
Browsing Digg on your phone just got easier with our enhancements to the 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is 
