Weird Facts of Physics: 1000s of Tons in a Teaspoon

[madmike159]

Yeah, I don't think you could get the spoon out of the black hole to see how much it weighs anyway! LOL

Why would you put it in there anyway?
Physicists and their crazy ideas

 

[1drdan]

It seems like water will boil and freeze simultaneously on Mars (it would in space). I don't know the atmospheric pressure on Mars, and that would be the determining factor.
In space as water boil away into the vacuum, it would still have to absorb heat to do so (boiling is an endothermic process). It would take this heat from the still unboiled water until it got cold enough to freeze. Hence, boiling and freezing simultaneously.

I heard once that if you took a bottle of water to Mars and poured it out, it would both freeze and boil and the same time!
(don't know if that's 100% true or not, but I found it pretty fascinating).

 

[matvince90]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6546462/The-10-weirdest-physics-facts-from-relativity-to-quantum-physics.html

 

[matvince90]

Because time slows down when you approach the speed of light, photons that were created in or just after the big bang are 0 years old where as the universe is 13.7 billion years old. (Many of the original photons have probably been absorbed and re emitted.)

That would mean that the whole length of the universe's current existence would happen in the fraction of a second relative to a photon that was created 13.7 billion Earth years ago? That's crazy! Also, would time go in reverse if you were go go faster than the speed of light? The universe is expanding, so something that exists further from the "center" of the universe would be moving faster than something that is closer to the "center". This would mean that speed is infinite, and not limited to the speed of light. You said that time slows down as it approaches the speed of light, what happens when it goes faster?

 

[cdotter]

It's not really a fact, but the light flash phenomenon is pretty cool.

http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/apollo/S4CH2.htm

 

[DaveC426913]

That would mean that the whole length of the universe's current existence would happen in the fraction of a second relative to a photon that was created 13.7 billion Earth years ago? That's crazy!

A photon does not have a valid point of view, for the very reason you mention.

However, if you accelerated in a spaceship to within a fraction of the speed of light, you would indeed see the the uiniverse age, wither and die bvefore your eyes.

But don't try it, that also means all the light in the lifetime of the universe will fall upon you as incredibly blue-shifted ultra-hard radiation. You'd better put on your shades!

Also, would time go in reverse if you were go go faster than the speed of light?

You cannot go faster than the speed of light.

The universe is expanding, so something that exists further from the "center" of the universe would be moving faster than something that is closer to the "center".

The universe has no centre. All points expand away from each other.

But yes, far flung parts of the universe are moving away from each other at faster than the speed of light.

And yes, that seems to contradict what I just said above. But it doesn't.

This would mean that speed is infinite, and not limited to the speed of light. You said that time slows down as it approaches the speed of light, what happens when it goes faster?

See above.

 

[BobGom]

Interactions between electrons in a solid are very complicated and anything close to an exact Quantum Mechanical solution is pretty much impossible. Yet you can get pretty good results in many cases by treating the electrons as a nearly free gas which only interacts with a periodic lattice of ions. This is despite electron-electron interactions being relatively strong and there being all sorts of correlation effects between electrons.

 

[pzona]

The universe is expanding, so something that exists further from the "center" of the universe would be moving faster than something that is closer to the "center".

Think of the universe as the *surface* of a balloon. Draw several arbitrary points on the balloon to represent different masses (stars, particles, anything really), and then start to inflate it. This is roughly what is meant by universal expansion. Everything is expanding relative to everything else, not expanding from a central point. Imagine the two dimensional surface as representing the three dimensional universe; does this make sense?

 

[Archosaur]

Einstein's biggest mistake was not a mistake.

Are you referring to the cosmological constant? If so, can you explain or redirect me?

 

[Andy Resnick]

I think the fact that every cell in our body has an electric field of about 1 MV/m across the membrane is pretty interesting.