Not exactly the prompt but I used to be hung up on The Boy in the Box mystery but I’m happy to report his identity has been found. His name was Joseph Augustus Zarelli.
Hiccups
Where did the matter/energy for Big Bang come from? On that note, what is outside the border of the universe?
The Universe is expanding, rapidly from the big bang still. At some point, it will slow down, and then stop. Then begins a catastrophic cycle of collapse with massive black holes coalescing into one universe eating black hole that compresses every bit of matter into a single point of almost infinite density. At this point the black hole destabilizes, and all of the stored energy is released in one colossal explosion. A Big Bang of sorts.
The Universe is an Ouroboros.
Somehow I find the Big Crunch more comforting than Big Rip…
There’s no proof the universe will end in a Big Crunch. Apparently there’s some measure of the universe where if it’s less than 1, we’ll get a Big Crunch, and if it’s greater than 1, we’ll get a Big Rip where everything just falls apart. I may have those backwards, but the important thing is when it’s exactly 1, it implies a universe that continues forever, getting colder and colder. And as best as science can determine for our universe, the value is precisely that.
But here’s another, well, dimension to that: There’s a popular but unprovable conjecture that our universe is the inside of a black hole that exists in a higher-level universe. In our universe, black holes boil away due to Hawking radiation, a process that can take trillions of years for very large black holes.
Once the black hole we’re inside of stops consuming matter in the level above, that spells a very slow but alternative end to our universe. One day it will simply cease to exist.
“This the way the world ends: Not with a bang, but a whimper.” – T.S.Eliot.
That is interesting but I reject the alternate theories of the Big Rip and the Silent Extinction because they are scary and I don’t like them.
I’ve become a fan of the “We’re already in a black hole” theory. The Schwarzschild radius for the mass of the known universe is larger than the radius thereof.
It’s probably not correct but I do like it.
Sometimes I think our universe is just an explosion in a big ass combustion engine.
So everytime I drive a car I create and destroy countless universes just to get some nuggets. Worth it.
At some point, it will slow down, and then stop
All of the current scientific evidence disagrees with this. 1) There is a velocity such that you can go faster than gravity will be able to slow you down: escape velocity. So, it’s possible even without any new, weird physics. 2) The hubble constant shows that the universe isn’t slowing down, but the opposite: it’s accelerating. Physics doesn’t know why (see Dark Energy). It’s physically measurable that things farther away are accelerating even faster scaling with distance.
Outside: there is a theory of other universes outside . Which would explain the increasing rate of expansion in place of dark energy
And then where did they matter and energy come from for that universe. It’s turtles all the way down…
Did you have a stroke while writing that?
Not a fan of Terry Pratchett I take it?
Doubt he even understands the beginnings of boot theory economics.
I proclaim you Grand WIZZARD And pray the wind always be at your back, and the luggage at your heels, but not too close to your heels.
This question actually doesn’t make sense, it’s kind of a paradox in the same way the question of what happened before the Big bang is also strange in the sense that the universe and reality didn’t exist in a form with causality in effect.
So asking a “before” question in reference to “before” time even started is paradoxical in and of itself. Since “before” wasn’t even a concept in existence.
Which is why scientists don’t really worry about anything “before” the Big bang.
I’m a big bang denier. I have zero evidence. I believe everything has always been, will always be, and goes on forever in every direction. I think anything we do to try to explain is just to protect our brains from being incapable of fathoming that everything is infinite.
Tunguska Event:
What’s the mystery with this one? It’s a very interesting event, but isn’t it generally pretty well understood?
Generally considered a meteor air burst, but there’s no crater and no evidence so it’s still very mysterious.
Oh ok, thanks. Didn’t realise that, will need to read up on it.
I’ve read interesting conspiracy, that Tunguska incident overlaps exactly with Nicola Tesla’s attempts to wireless transfer of energy. Was an interesting idea and read, even though very unlikely to be based on real event.
The voynich manuscript. It’s so wild and interesting, a complete mystery too
Not completely mysterious, but still largely so. The usual zodiacal constellations are listed, and the names therein have allegedly been decoded as resembling a Turkic language.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t a hoax, only that someone with knowledge of a Turkic language helped create those pages in particular.
The fact that there is something in there with credibility makes it further a mystery to me.
Even if it is eventually exposed as a hoax - that is, not as old as claimed or from a different or untrustworthy source - that works make the book no less of an impressive accomplishment and global mind fuck! 🤯 Whatever it really is, it’s a win.
I’m kinda partial to the fine-structure constant
Fine-Structure Constant (1/137): This dimensionless constant, approximately equal to 1/137, is crucial in quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. It characterizes the strength of the electromagnetic interaction between elementary charged particles.
It’s weird because the number ends up in places that should be thoroughly unrelated yet that’s one hell of it coincidence.
The stussy/cool S
what the hell are these for?
I saw a video on YouTube showing how to use them for knitting gloves, you can still buy plastic versions
is there contemporary evidence of knit gloves?
The coin-verifying hypothesis seems compelling
Why not just make that out of a flat piece of metal, or even a plank of wood though? Why bother with the very complicated 3D shape that took a lot more work to make?
Are all the sides equal on this dodecahedron? Maybe its for multiple coin types?
The holes through the holes are usually different sizes but I don’t think any two examples are exactly alike. And you could have a board with several holes drilled in it to test multiple coin types.
Also, did the Roman empire issue 12 different sizes of coin?
I collect ancient coins and this explanation doesn’t fly for me. There’s a certain amount of “artisanal-ness” in the production of ancient coins - which were all handmade. Like, I’m looking at a tray of coins right now and there’s no way a simple go/no-go tool would be helpful. Also, for this purpose a simple handheld counterweight balance would be more accurate and portable. The existence of these simple balances, along with reference weights for various denominations, is well documented.
Moreover - if you’re an ancient merchant, what is more important? The weight of the silver or the ability for it to pass for a denarius issued by Rome? Particularly for international trade, it seems to have been the former. Bankers’ cuts and countermarks are commonly seen on coins, and seem to have been an early form of foreign exchange. (eg - I’m travelling from Athens to Ephesus with a stock of my local currency. If I pass it to a local banker in Ephesus, they can evaluate it, determine the local exchange in terms of silver, and give it a locally recognized countermark to assure their own merchants that they’re getting the equivalent local value).
That being now off my chest, I’ve got no great answers for the dodecahedrons. I strongly suspect that it was a nifty thing that metal workers made as a master’s thesis.
A rubix cube type of thing? It just seems like the skeleton of something, like it had other wooden parts that latched onto the knobs and rotated somehow.
They are just from the Roman equivalent of Hobby Lobby or the like. Just “quirky” home decor that was popular at the time. If they had the internet you would find these on ebay, etsy, facebook, pinterest… nothing to see here
My pet theory for these is that they’re like a test of skill for metalworkers, and that they would be put on display as proof of their capabilities. They were often found in safes with coins, which I think supports this theory. You wouldn’t want some rival metalworkers stealing your skills display and making it so nobody trusts them anymore.
My theory is that they were just decorative tchotchkes that were popular at one point in history. We have crap like this today and it would all probably baffle archeologists of the future as to what their purpose was. Like… Imagine in 1000 years someone digs up a near perfectly preserved Furby or an oddly shaped paper weight.
Or fidget spinners.
How does the Universe expand? Isn’t the Universe the container space of all that which exists, where does it expand to?
Why is there even an edge? I’m already mortal, why does my spacetime need hard limits too?? It’s just cosmic baloney man.
There is no edge. Just the farthest back in time we can see because of how long light takes to reach us. It’s constantly expanding not because it doesn’t exist but because we can see more of the light.
I suspect we don’t know as much as we think we do about the way the universe works. Once we figure out the missing info, it will unlock a lot more than just the forces at play.
Why do we park in a driveway and drive in a parkway?
where do socks go in the dryer?
If you take the dryer apart you would likely find all the socks inside it.
Caught up one of the rotating convex thingies or someone takes it with the rest of theirs when you leave them behind in mentioned
What caused the Bronze age collapse? Who were the Sea People?
Its all fun and games until the sea peoples arrive. Ruining all our parties with their looting, hogging all the tin so we can’t make bronze. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Or Crab People
Whether or not George Mallory summitted Everest.
Mallory was a great climber. People who knew him think he had the ability. Another member of his expedition saw Mallory and his partner, Andrew Irvine, close to the summit, but not close enough to be certain whether or not they made it.
Neither man returned from the mountain. Mallory’s body was later found, many decades after he died. but Irvine was never seen again, dead or alive.
There are various other bits of circumstantial evidence, but the fact is we’ll simply never know for sure. I like to think they made it.
In the depth of pandemic lockdown, after my roommate moved out to return closer to family, I was in my house alone for a month straight. One day I hear the tea kettle whistling on the stove.
It was the middle of summer, I hadn’t made tea in weeks. Maybe I bumped the stove control? But there shouldn’t have been any water in the kettle. And I hadn’t been in my kitchen for over an hour and it wouldn’t have taken that long for the water to boil had I put it on and just forgotten about it somehow. I keep my doors locked.
Idk, the only thing I can think of is the isolation really got to me that day, I put the kettle on and completely forgot I had done it five minutes later.
Was there any water actually in it or did you not check?
Maybe tinnitus or tv?
It was about half full of water and it was boiling.
What kind of stove? Could you have bumped the knob and the kettle had water leftover from last time?
So if there was nobody else there you must have done that and just blepped or been on autopilot. It happens lol
Carbon monoxide? really that seems concerning
It was zak bagans.
Why aren’t the basic laws of mathematics clean round numbers? Why are pi and e irrational? What secret is hidden down in the depths of these numbers?
Isn’t nature lazy? Like everything is in search of equilibrium and once its optimized, saul goodman
It seems to me that the concept the ratio of the circumference of a circle to the radius is a finite value. It’s cool that it turns out to be an irrational number for us but I think that’s more a statement of how we handle math than some mystical thing.
So, it would be “fixed” if we based or math around these numbers? Like, a new numeral system where 3 = pi?
There a infinitely more irrational numbers than rational numbers, so if one were to search for a special number like π or e, they are more likely to find them to be irrational than rational. It would be instance coincidence if those numbers would be something nice and even. And since almost everything in math is derived from either π or e and you can’t simply divide or multiply away irrationality (except with another irrational number) this irrationality tends to stick around. We essentialy have a π centric number system inside the decimal system, that’s why π gets its own symbol. No mathematician ever writes out π as a 3.1415…, so for all that matters the symbol π is nice and even.
