A community for a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.
Alt text:
==COSMOLOGY==> 'Uhhh ... how sure are we that everything is made of these?'
Cosmology you put enough mass in a small enough area it becomes a singularity.
Quantum mechanics information can't be destroyed to an unrecoverable state so singularities are impossible.
A big bang could recover it, you don't know. It's statistically possible and that's all that counts
Per the alt text: How do we know that particles are the smallest bits? Let's zoom in even further.
These are the questions that make me feel such an insane sense of wonder and awe.
How deep does it go?
How high does it go the other way? How big does existence get?
Why is there something rather than nothing?
What is nothing made of?
Nothing is more of a definition than a thing. It's just the absence of matter.
That's not really considering existence that deeply though. Nothing has to be something. Gravity and radiation are transmitted through the void of particle-less space. If nothing were truly nothing in an absolute sense....that couldn't be possible. Something permits information to pass from point to point through interstellar space where there are on average 100 particles per cubic meter.
What did the universe explode into during the big bang and expansion?? Nothing is actually really weird.
I recommend all of the videos on history of the universe on YouTube
Even in the absence of matter, there’s still the quantum foam. The most perfect vacuum is teeming with this energy. To truly understand the nature of 'nothing,' one would need to venture beyond spacetime itself—and even then, it’s not guaranteed that 'nothing' would be found. Physics suggests that anything existing outside of or predating spacetime would generally have no impact on us; it doesn't necessarily explain what the 'outside' might be like.
I'd say nothing is less a definition but rather an informal shorthand for how we percieve at macro scale with our wrinkly 4D brains.
Right, it's part of what leaves me in such awe. What lies beyond? It seems nonsensical to us because we are defined by the gameboard we play on. The concept of the table it's sitting on makes no sense. How could we ever hope to detect or understand something like that, something that exists beyond our space time, with no ability to build instruments in anything above 3 dimensions plus time.
And then even when you try to peer behind the definition of "nothing" with math all you are greeted with is infinities which we handily just swept under the rug and pretended to be zero so we could define a "nothing" state in the first place!
What is nothing made of?
Oooh! I know this one! It's Quantum Foam! 😁
It’s turtles all the way down
Quantum field theory really aligns with my fap roulette kink.
What is this author for XKCD’s background? He seems to know a lot about a lot of complex subjects. I’m always impressed.
Degree in physics. Worked for NASA as a programmer and roboticist. Full time "cartoonist" since 2006.
It's understandable that he didn't have time to learn how to draw, then.
Sounds like he’s related to this guy
At my work, we meet astronauts fairly often (I met Jonny Kim last year), and it's amazing how many of them are like this. They'll usually pass out their headshots that have their bio on the back, and the number of advanced degrees and impressive accomplishments is jaw dropping. Like I feel like I'd think my life was worthwhile if I did one of those things by the end of it, and a lot of the astronauts are hardly more than half my age. And to really rub it in, they all seem incredibly genuine, personable, and well adjusted.
There are a giant number of people who want to be astronauts, and NASA only needs a small number in a given year, so they can pick the very cream of the crop.
At least we're sending space our best.
Could you imagine what the world would be like if we let their like lead our countries?
Ah, a meritocracy instead of a plutocracy. Maybe someday, if we survive.
When you rule, you get to pick what qualities have merit, which is how we end up of administrations of The Master Race or lispy Spaniards, or ruthlesd billionaires.
We're still trying to figure out how to get to government tha implements public-serving ideas.
Just wait until you learn about Johnny Sins
Crazy thing is very similar mathematical structures is used to define the behavior of a single particle in QFT and of a huge collection of particles in condensed matter physics
It’s not crazy when you think they are both trying to model the same universe.
Neither of them is trying to model the universe (that is the purview of cosmology). We are trying to model very particular phenomenon happening in the universe and there is no reason to expect them to modeled using the mathematical structure. The fact that they are is very fascinating.
When you section off a small part of the universe and try to model it, there's little reason your model should look like a model for a completely different small part of the universe. Not unless they share fundamental characteristics that you're trying to model. The math that describes permanent deformation looks nothing like fluid dynamics.
They are both describing the same particles.
They are both describing the same particles.
Water and ice are made up the same particles and molecules yet the mathematical structure to define the effect of force/pressure is very different - plastic deformation vs fluid dynamics as the example given above
I mean in the case of the comic, yeah the reason for the behavior actually is tied to pretty much the same principles, but the generalized statement you made isn't, well, generalizable.
Recursive universe theory strikes again.